Keeping Arnold
by Lachesism
Summary: After ten long years in San Lorenzo, Arnold suddenly returns to Hillwood, literally bumping into Helga and turning her world upside down. Gerald and Phoebe start acting suspicious about his return; what secrets does he bring with him, and what does it mean for Helga? Can she get him to stay? Does she want him to stay? A dramatic, mature romance set when the PS118 kids are adults.
1. Chapter 1 - Conditional Wretch

A/N: Thank you for reading! This story is rated M for mature language, themes, and events. Takes place 10 years after TJM, assuming Arnold found his parents and stayed with them. Buckle in, there's a lot more where this came from. R/R always welcome!

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 1: Conditional Wretch

"Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were." – Marcel Proust

* * *

"You should have come back sooner, Football Head," Helga said with sincerity. Ten years was a long time. So much had changed, their friends had grown up and moved away and changed; the class they shared together as kids in PS118 was gone. Helga was still best friends with Phoebe Heyerdahl, and of course was in her band with Brainy, but the rest had all scattered out and across Hillwood in high school or shortly after.

Arnold looked at her, feeling as guilty as he had the time he read from her pink book out loud to the rest of their friends on the school stoop. He had missed his friends, all of them, terribly. But all of that guilt was useless inside him, empty emotional calories that he could do nothing about now.

"Why didn't you write me back?" Arnold searched Helga's face for something, his question hopeful but quiet. Arnold had kept his promise at first, writing her once a month without missing even one letter. Helga read them all, touching each line of her beloved's thoughtfully composed letters and keeping them in a big box she decorated with her pink ribbon - the one he liked so much - and marked it "Important."

Over time, though, his letters started to come less and less, and then finally they stopped. Helga knew she was part of the reason.

"I wrote you back once," she said sourly, arching one of her strong eyebrows up and crossing her arms under her chest protectively. She always felt naked in front of him, terribly visible, somehow even more so now that he was back.

"'Hello Football Head, don't get killed in the jungle. Regards, Helga.' That's what you wrote to me, 'Regards, Helga.' What was that?" Arnold bitterly recited her pithy letter from memory back at her in its entirety. Helga winced with every word.

Of course, she wanted to write him back. She wanted to write him _every day._ She had stacks of letters, actually, boxes and boxes of them written, each of them confessing in a new and special way all of her desires, all of her feelings for him and wishing him every happiness. All of them remained unsent, and up until Big Bob and Miriam divorced after she graduated, the boxes were in her old closet. Now they sat in storage, a library of her love for him, long since packed away.

"Well what was I supposed to say?" That was part sarcastic Helga, part sincere question. "You found your family, you got what you wanted. And _we were ten_."

"I told you how I felt, what happened?"

"Criminy, I just said what happened. _You found your family._ I was a ten year old girl you thought you had a crush on because I helped you find said family. You probably didn't even mean what you said - and what was I supposed to do, ask you to come back or something? Because, duh, we were ten years old."

"I meant what I said, Helga." Arnold's voice was quiet, but she could hear the anger in his voice. She remembered when he sounded like that the last time, right before their confrontation on the TPi building.

"Yeah, well, Bucko, that's all old history now," she lied. He had no idea how much it meant to her that he was back. She felt like dying every time he looked at her. The fact that he was upset with her tortured her.

"Is it? Dammit, Helga."

She jumped when he cursed her name, flinching like she was just pricked by a sharp edge. He'd never cussed before. She'd never heard it before anyway, and the first time she ever did, her name filled his mouth with it. She tried to show how little she cared with a disdainful curl of her lip, but it took all of her effort. She squeezed her own rib cage hard, protectively.

"Are we done here?" She finally managed to ask. Arnold just looked at her for half a beat, shook his head, and then stood up from their table. Helga's heart was dropping into her stomach, terrified he would walk out that cafe door and out of her life forever.

"Arnold, wai-" She started to say, but Arnold held up a hand to silence her, turning slightly so he could face her.

"I'm going to step outside to get a bit of fresh air. When I come back I want you to talk to me truthfully. I know you have something else to say, and I'm going to hear it before I leave Hillwood"

_Before he leaves?_ Helga's mind raced, a bolt of white panic settling down like molten lead in her guts, making her sick to her stomach. She wanted to throw up. _When is he leaving again? How much time do I have?_ She didn't respond to his silent, questioning look. He was waiting for her to speak. She just looked up at him helplessly, her eyebrows high and her mouth pursed in fear. He seemed to wince when he processed her expression, and then finally turned to walk out of the door.

The door chime jingled once, and he was out the door into the late summer haze.

Helga's head lowered into the bare comfort of her hands, and she tried to find the world beneath her that had just rushed away.

_Why is he leaving me again?_

* * *

Helga stood from her seat in the lecture hall, shouldering her pink and black canvas messenger bag and grumbling to herself in a private monologue on her way out the door.

_Criminy. Idiot professor. Of __course__ the Bronte sisters don't represent a terribly huge stride forward in feminist thought, but __damn__ it all if they weren't successful women authors!_

Helga's disagreement with her Women's Studies professor stemmed from a lot of things, mostly a difference in personality, but Helga couldn't help but suspect it was because she wore a lot of pink. And it was _her choice_ to wear pink, she _liked_ pink. She didn't wear it to impress anyone!

_Almost anyone._ She thought bitterly. She remembered that _he_ had liked pink too, specifically pink on _her._ For that alone she felt like maybe her professor had a point, but her Pataki genetic predisposition to catastrophic stubbornness did now allow her to ever say it out loud. As it stood, she was still the professor's favorite student partially for her enthusiasm for the subject and also the fact that Helga seemed to be _exhaustively_ well read. Most of the students in the 101-level class simply copied notes down and asked questions; Helga challenged her professor, often. So even though this was a common occurrence, and Helga would stomp out of the lecture hall with her bag wrenched tight in white-knuckled fury, she had the highest grade in the class.

That hardly calmed the stormy sea of her anger though.

Her temper was still legendary; most of the incoming Freshman to the University gave her a wide berth after, on Greek Day, a foolish prospective Fraternity freshman attempted to catcall her for image and prestige. She was a likely target for that kind of thing; Helga had grown into the same enviable Pataki body that Olga was blessed with. And even though her strong eyebrows and nearly perpetual frown turned a lot of people off, Helga's bold style of dress, powerful and athletic build she maintained well in gyms, and glorious tumble of nearly hip-length blonde hair made her seem like a walking Valkyrie, an image she was proud of. And yet despite the intimidating figure she cut physically, she kept her hair in pigtails most days - not today - and wore a lot of pink flannel. It gave the false impression that she was _approachable_. So it was that the unfortunate soul, who in his misogynistic baseness thought it would earn him a few brownie points with his prospective brothers, called out to her that day.

Not only did he not get into the Frat he wanted, but he dropped out of school after she corrected the number of teeth he thought he should have. It turns out, Helga asserted with her fist, he needed a few less.

So it was that Helga's powerful, obviously disgruntled stride was given a wide berth by the rest of the student body. With her eyes cast to the ground in a scowl, she could only just make out in her periphery that there was one figure stubbornly remaining in the trajectory she was on to her next class. Growling to herself, she walked _faster_, not about to alter her course for some box turtle of a Freshman that didn't know what was coming.

Her blue eyes flashed up suddenly and she felt her heart do a terrible flip inside her chest when he turned around right as she ran into him, toppling them both over in a collection of tall limbs and unique hair.

"Geez, anybody get the number of that _freight train?_" He grumbled."Not even for insurance purposes, I have a _complaint._" She heard him groan as he rolled off her to get up. She lay right where she fell under him, gripping the concrete with her hands and a look of absolute terror on her face.

Arnold Shortman rolled onto his heels, rubbing his arm where she ran into him, and looked into her eyes for the first time in ten years.

"Helga?" He blinked twice, his face a mix of something she couldn't recognize.

Her mouth was dry with panic, so she licked her lips and tried to swallow. All she could manage was a dry croak.

"H-hey, Arnold."

* * *

Helga had _no_ idea what was going on or where she was going or how in the name of anything holy she was going there with Arnold.

And yet there he was, all six feet tall of him (_When did that happen? _She wondered), beautiful and tan (_He's so tan!_ She marveled), and smiling at the city around them, and walking with her.

She walked in morbid silence, unable to do much beyond a simple nod or two to simple questions he asked her about the neighborhood. She just was having difficulty processing the situation. She was now nineteen years old, and Arnold had left Hillwood not long after their adventure to San Lorenzo. After all, he found his parents in the jungle, and what is an orphan kid going to do if he finally discovers his parents out there, _alive_ and well? And then almost ten years later, she quite literally runs into him on her University campus.

_What the fuck is happening?_ That was the basic limit of what her thoughts could process. Arnold, (_Bless Him,_ she thought), for his part, was merely walking next to her, a respectful but agonizing nine inches of air between their shoulders. After he helped her up off the ground, Arnold had exploded with joy, shouting and talking a Tolstoy novel a minute about how he had missed her and he was so happy to see her and he couldn't believe how tall she was, and just about a trillion other things by Helga's reckoning. She had to forcibly shut him up with a hand on his shoulder.

"Cool it, Football Head. You look like you've seen a ghost. it's just Helga G. Pataki here." She tried to play it cool. _Old habits die hard, don't they old girl? _She mused to herself. She was scared, and surprised, and so unbelievably _happy_ she could barely process the fact that he was standing right there, smiling in her general direction.

"It's just really good to see you, is all, Helga." The same brilliant, angelic smile he had back then, she thought, only now it was augmented by a more robust, adult jawline and _oh my dear God is that his CHIN?_ She had trouble just looking at him. Time in South America was apparently _very_ good for handsomeness.

"What are you even doing here?" She had to ask.

"I'm back!" Big smile from Arnold.

"You're back? Back back?" She wondered if he caught the tremble of hope in her voice, the quiet plea.

"Let's just get caught up first, it's been so long! I saw Gerald at his Frat house and he said you'd probably be here. I'm just so glad to see you, Helga."

She stopped walking, and Arnold stopped a step behind her, turning to look at her.

"What's up, something wrong?" He had a slight accent, she just noticed, like he hadn't been speaking English much for a long time.

Helga hesitated. Of course, she had fantasized about this exact moment, this very precise occurrence. A thousand scenarios had been played out in her imagination, her fevered dreams, her private notebooks filled with poetry and prose dedicated to him, and his memory. There was a laundry list of things she _wanted _to say to him, things she _needed_ to hear to get closure on her end. There were hours and hours of monologues written and prepared for the myriad variables for how she would see him again. Cross-indexed and aligned according to season, location, and method, she had at her mimetic disposal the immediate way she wanted to have this go down.

Helga wanted to jump on him and drown him in kisses, and destroy the pavement beneath them with the sheer force of their collision.

But seeing him in the flesh somehow dispelled all those fantasies. Somehow, the Arnold of her dreams just didn't measure up to the Arnold standing in front of her. She could barely think, now that he was here, much less remember what she wanted to _say. _All she could do was panic, and stall for time. In a sick haze she remembered her next class, and felt a cool wash of relief that she had a way out.

"I-I don't have a lot of _time_ before my next class, Hair Boy." Arnold frowned at her. It was devastating, and she felt very cowardly. She held onto her arm for comfort, and looked away, unable to bear that dreadful expression on his glowing face..

"Oh. Well. What about after, maybe we can meet at the coffee shop down the corner when you're done? Is two hours enough?"

She gripped her bag uncomfortably. He better not be asking her on a date. He had too much to explain. Too much had _happened._ She had confined the memory of him to an almost impossible-to-reach location. Romantic interludes were simply not _possible. _And even though there was little else in the entire possibility stream of this quantum universe we inhabit she wanted more than to catch up with Arnold over a cup of coffee, she was downright terrified. Unfortunately the way she typically showed fear was with anger and impatience.

"Yeah I guess that works. This better not be some kind of date, Arnold." She clenched her fist at her side, and Arnold looked at her hand, nonplussed. He canted his head just slightly, and looked at her for a beat, as if he was searching her face. She added, quietly. "I mean it."

"It won't be. Just catching up."

She knew what she _wanted_ to do, and she also know what would happen if she sat opposite of Arnold at a little table in a dimly lit, comfy coffee shop where the exotic smell of roasting espresso beans and the romantic sound of eclectic music filled the air. She wasn't sure her heart could take jumping full on into the Arnold ocean just yet. She begged inwardly for a chance to go back to the kiddie pool. With no savior coming to her aid, and nothing left to do but go with her own decision making ability, she chewed her lip and struggled with her choice. Finally, she knew what to do.

"Alright. I'll meet you there. Don't wait up if I'm late though, I'm busy." _Why did you say that?_ She hated herself for accepting his outstretched hand at the same time she pushed it away.

"Great. I'll count every minute." Arnold smiled at her and she had to screw up her face in a sour expression to keep from a savage, heavy tear from tearing free of her eye and rolling down her cheek. He frowned again, looking at her in the same terrible, searching way he had moments before. She shifted uncomfortably in his gaze.

"Sure, great, alright, well, now that I have a creepy stalker I'll go be on my way to class and try not to worry you've got several duffle bags with my name on them." She snorted, and Arnold made a face.

"Whatever you say, Helga." And then he turned way, and for a hideous second Helga remembered the last time he turned away from her, and what that meant for her, and she almost tackled his back. If she did that, though, she knew, heartbreak and trouble would immediately follow.

"See ya soon, Arnold." She whispered the same last words she had when he left the last time, and staggered in a daze to her next class.

* * *

Of course, Helga couldn't concentrate in her class at all. Within her heart was a stirring turmoil that rose like boiling water under her skin, and left her dizzy and surly. _Thank God this is just Russian History._ Helga was thankful that her easiest subject in what was really a quite rigorous semester was what followed her confrontation with Arnold. _Confrontation? Hardly, __I__ was the only one that was confrontational_, she cursed herself.

How was she supposed to listen to a lecture about what was normally one of her favorite subject, Catherine the Great, when the one-time love of her life was just _hanging out_ at a coffee shop she could get to in two minutes full sprint? Helga was decidedly not paying attention, and held her thick, bold eyebrows knitted in concentration and worry. There was too much happening in her head to make any kind of coherent thoughts gather.

What she did know was that she was extremely happy and extremely afraid. There was precisely one human being in all seven-something billion on the planet that could do this to her. She had the unfortunate luck of meeting him when she was only three years old, and was unfortunately his servant in heart and mind ever since. That was what scared her. Even though she spent hours and hours daydreaming about this _exact_ moment, wishing every day that she would turn a corner and bump into Arnold, she never imagined how it would feel when it really happened. It always went a lot simpler in her mind.

What would he say? What did he _want_? Was he really just eager to catch up to an old friend - was she just a friend to him still? Their parting had been the most confusing and difficult moment in her life, and not knowing how she stood with him anymore was nightmarish.

_Easy, Helga, old girl. Remember, his letters towards the end got really chummy._ Helga had to remind herself of the way his writing matured and changed over time. She felt unimaginably lucky to get to watch his style and prose grow as he wrote to her, unanswered. Except for once. That was all she could bring herself to manage, that single letter devoid of anything except a casual wish for his general well health. "Don't die in the Jungle. Regards, Helga." She remembered the words. She chewed on what to write for months. It took her six months from the time he left to write him back, six of his unanswered letters asking her to write him back so he could _talk_ to her about his incredible hero parents, and that pathetic response was all she could muster.

She shifted in her chair and slunk further under the desk to try to keep from getting called on, feeling her face get hot with the shame furnace of embarrassment. She knew she was red, her fair skin always showed embarrassment really easily. Luckily, her professor was an old man and uninterested in most teenage problems, and kept his questions to the ones that participated the most. It was usually Helga, but today she was visibly pensive. The normally loud-mouthed and expressive girl was quiet and tense in her chair, unable to make eye contact where it normally was held confidently.

Putting it mildly, Helga Geraldine Pataki was shaken.

_He's finally back and you're too afraid to go see him._ Her courage with Arnold had always been fleeting. She somehow found it in special moments, the moments when she really needed it the most. She did not hesitate to act when she felt like he was threatened or being taken advantage of; Summer had learned that lesson. She smiled to herself suddenly remembering the "kiss" she gave Arnold in her Babewatch one piece bathing suit. _Still the second best kiss of all time._ She smirked. Thinking of the good moments gave her the strength to keep thinking of him, to press herself forward mentally with the grim determination that she wielded like a weapon in all other instances.

Before she knew it, however, her class was over, and she had to go see him. She had to walk herself to that coffee shop and try to not act like the entirety of her world had suddenly changed _again._ Helga could deal with adversity - that was her forte - but in this _one _subject she had to force herself to do it.

Somehow one foot led in front of the other all the way to the coffee shop. She stared at her pink and black Converse high-tops the entire time, staring at the little white heart with "A+H" she doodled on them as a private joke to herself. She just _had_ to wear them today.

Her hand mechanically pushed the door open, and the door chime jingled once. She found his face immediately, and was so shocked at seeing him a second time, nearly as bad as the first, that she had to steady herself on the wall for just an instant.

_He's so good looking._ She breathed to herself. Time in South America or wherever he was apparently aged him extremely well. Arnold was never a big kid, but the man sitting at the table waiting for her was almost six feet tall, and tanned in that healthy way that screamed a lifetime of working in the tropics. His hair was still that wild blonde mess, but the sun had kissed it and given him the light-drenched waves that were scattered over his forehead and eyebrows now. His head still reminded her of a football. She smiled at that, but the jaw line defined itself and his chin got just strong enough to lift up and expose the Adam's apple under a light dusting of blonde stubble.

He looked so good to Helga in his ruby red flannel shirt with his sleeves rolled up. She thought she caught a glimpse of something tattooed on his forearms, which looked strong and surprisingly well built to her. She had no idea what he had done in San Lorenzo, but it evidently was good for the male figure.

He saw her. Those big green eyes of his opened up wide and little thin lines creased at his temples when he smiled at her. One of her knees buckled, and she had to grab a man passing her on the way out as she stumbled down the short steps into the coffee shop to walk to their table.

Finally, Helga crossed her legs in the chair opposite of Arnold and looked at him in silence, her face as neutral as she could manage. He was still smiling at her, and all she could do was look at him in reverence.

"You look great, Helga," he half-laughed when he said that. "Really, I mean, you, uh," he looked away shyly, and she almost whimpered. "You grew up," he finally managed to croak out. He looked back at her, smiling still.

"Y-yeah, well, ten years does that to a girl." She hoped he didn't hear the clear tinge of bitterness in her voice, but she was afraid it was very obvious.

He didn't respond to the sarcasm. "No pink ribbon though? I couldn't imagine you without it." Helga tried not to let herself think that meant he did a lot of imagining her.

"I still have it, it's just in storage somewhere." She didn't add that it was wrapped around the box full of his letters.

"Oh, I see. Well, I'm excited to be back in the old neighborhood. I didn't expect to see you here, actually, I thought you would be off with Phoebe at some Ivy League somewhere, solving the world hunger crisis." He laughed a little.

"Saving the hungry was always your sort of deal, Football Head. Besides, I _got_ into those colleges, I just didn't like their _offers._ The only schools worth my time are the ones that beg me to go." At last, she seemed to find her footing, some little toehold of confidence she could use.

"Hahaha, that's Helga all right. Well what do you study?"

"Double major in Creative Writing and Women's Studies. I'll probably get a masters in something if they beg me hard enough. Oh, and pay me." She scratched at her arm, the only visible sign of body language that she was nervous. She needed to get the conversation off of her somehow. "So, uh, how about some coffee, Hairboy?"

"Oh right! Yeah, give me a second. I'll buy - not in a date way, just friends." He smiled at her reassuringly, standing from the table. She nodded at him, turning her head to look at something else. Anything else.

She couldn't help herself though, and whipped her head back around to check him out as he walked to the counter. _Strong legs and a perfect ass too, and in old jeans. God, kill me, strike me dead, for I am unworthy to gaze upon such perfection. Are those dusty __cowboy__ boots? Who __is__ this guy? When did he become a caballero? _She marveled at this Arnold ten feet away from her, looking up at the coffee shop menu in the handsome, warm light, totally oblivious of her gawking. For a second she couldn't remember the last time she felt this nervous, this physically sick just from looking at someone. But then she could, and bitterly recalled the last time he walked away for good.

He came back with two small white porcelain cups steaming and fragrant with espresso.

"Dos cafe," he said, setting her cup in front of her. "Por mi amiga." She looked at him a little funny, her bold eyebrows going up on her head, beneath her blonde bangs that she cast to the side away from the shaved surface of her scalp above the left ear.

"Oh sorry, I, uh, sometimes forget to speak English," he explained. She privately filed away that he was at least bilingual now. Another reason he was amazing, and perfect, and another dangerous weapon he had against her.

"Very fancy, Football Head, very fancy. So...so what's up? What do you wanna know about your, uh, hiatus?" She tried to get to the point of the matter. She needed to know why _her._ Was it just because she was one of the few left in their hometown? Did he seek her out first? She had to know. She lifted the cup of espresso to her face to inhale the deep scent, and to hide her nervous frown.

"I want to know about a lot of things, but I'll find out most of it at the party." He set his cup down, smiling disarmingly.

"Party? Beg your pardon?"

"Yeah, Gerald said he is throwing a big party at his Frat house this weekend and, get this," Arnold reached for his messenger bag, old, leather, and instantly recognizable as his father's. She wouldn't forget it, not in this lifetime. He pulled out a little black book, and Helga recognized that too. Gerald's Little Black Book, his dossier of everyone worth knowing and every major event in the city. The ciphers contained in that humble Moleskine could destroy lives and make careers. "He's got pretty much everybody from the old gang coming."

"What? How is that possible, even for him?" Helga had to give props to Gerald's impressive network. He was the one who had - reluctantly - helped her get her first gig with her band, and a few more after that. All he asked for were favors he could cash in later. He had yet to call any of them in, and he had three. But she always expected that the well-connected athlete going to the same university as her would call her in the least convenient way possible.

"All he did was use this," Arnold smiled as he put the black book on the table in front of her. "And tell them who it was for."

Helga's eyebrows went up, and she clucked her tongue, legitimately impressed. "He's got us all in there, doesn't he?"

"You know he does. Weirdly, though, most of it is in code. Guess he doesn't want most of whatever is in here public knowledge.""

"Even he manages to not screw something up from time to time," Helga sighed, and took another small sip of her espresso. She was meticulously measuring her posture, her expression, every exact movement to seem casual. The opposite of the scrabbling terror in her skull.

"_I_ was impressed, and thankful," Arnold laughed, putting the black book back in his bag. "He let me borrow it to find the old gang still living nearby, and a few important others." Arnold looked down at their table and swept some strewn loose sugar off the surface, clearing his throat.

"Which is why we're here," he slowly continued. She wasn't sure why he was looking down, away from _her_, but it made her afraid.

_He must be tired of looking at me in this light. I bet I look a terror, all sweaty and no makeup._ If she hadn't already been catastrophically self-conscious she would have suddenly felt totally exposed.

"I had to see you first." His green eyes lifted, catching hers directly and holding them tight.

"Wh-wha, what?" She stammered her response. _He had to see me first? What does he mean?_

"I wrote you so many times, Helga. I had to see you first, to know the truth for myself." Arnold was always so _driven_ and _obsessed_ with the truth. It was easily one of his most heroic qualities to her, but Helga found herself stymied by it often. Moments like now were a prime example.

She didn't respond for a good while, looking at her hands on the table, eyebrows up and her expression sad.

Finally, she spoke, slowly, and quietly, so Arnold had to lean in close to hear her.

"You should have come back sooner, Football Head."

* * *

Arnold came back into the cafe ten minutes or so after he left the table. She watched him call someone on his cell phone when he left, animatedly speaking Spanish and visibly frustrated. It bothered her that she was the reason he was upset, but it fascinated her that this man she loved - loved still? - had grown so _different_ yet remained so utterly the same.

When he sat down, she started to talk immediately, before her courage left her.

"I wrote you back every single day," she began hastily. "I just never sent them to you. I _couldn't_. Every letter started with 'I miss you' and ended with 'Please come home.' Criminy, Arnold, do you know how hard it was when you left? How scared I was that I would never see you again? Every letter you wrote me was a new pleasure, an amazing soul-dizzying joy that I treasured, hoarded, kept in meticulous order by date in a huge box I marked '_Important._' I was twelve when you stopped sending them every month, and sixteen when they stopped entirely. I figured you, I don't know, _moved on_ or something."

Arnold did not answer, but just looked at her like he wanted her to go on. She was expecting him to jump in, and his silence put her off balance, prompting her to keep spilling her guts.

"So yeah, uh...so, I, I _wanted_ to send them all to you. I wanted to know what your family was like, what you were going through, and tell you all about what was happening here. But, I figured Gerald was already telling most of the important stuff, and besides I couldn't send you something asking you to leave your _family._ But I was ten, and then a teen, and I..." Helga paused, forcing the words out of her mouth slowly. "I m-m-mmmissed you. That was what I wanted. I wanted you to leave them and come back to me. It was selfish. It would have hurt you."

Arnold started to make a face at her, and opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted him quickly.

"No, Arnold, it would have been _terrible._ You don't know what I _wrote._ I couldn't help it, every time I started to write something friendly and apologetic for not writing back yet, everything just came pouring out of me, all over the damn pages, and in between the hot pissed off tears and ink stains were the words '_I need you every day._' I don't know how I managed to write what you got. It's a fucking miracle it was less than nine pages."

"So you just didn't send anything instead." Arnold's voice was flat.

"I couldn't be selfish and burden your new life with your parents with my stupid girlhood crush. I knew better. I hated it, but I knew someone as amazing as you would find someone out there. I was just going to be happy with what I had, nice childhood memories of a wonderful boy who was always nice to me no matter how nasty I got to him. I had the whole thing packaged up all neat and tidy, see, a real lovely little memory, and I would just live on and never forget. That was all I could do. Anything more wouldn't have been fair, or realistic, or even _possible._ And...and I figured you...you didn't mean what you said in the jungle, because _you never said it again."_

The silence between them was choking, stifling. Helga felt dizzy and sick, even worse than before. She certainly hadn't meant to totally pour her guts out to her first childhood love today. That was not on her agenda. All she could do was hope it was enough to appease him, to make him stay here to talk to her some more. She felt helpless, under his scrutiny, _observed._ She hated the sensation even as she thrilled under it.

Finally, Arnold gave her his reply.

"I just wanted to talk to you." His voice didn't even hide the hurt. She despaired that she hurt him. She knew she had to. She knew she would have to again. Her resolve, her absolute fortitude was that she could always do what she thought was right for him, even if it murdered her. He spoke again, this time with a bit more anger. "Nothing back for six years, Helga. Except that one letter, like _nothing even happened._ But it did. I said that I loved you back then, and I _meant _it."

Her heart almost totally stopped, hammering so hard in her chest she felt it in her eyes. He couldn't imagine the power those words held over her, and what they did to her when he spoke them about her. But she was saddened by them, too, because she knew they were wasted. That was a long time ago. They were different now. He didn't know who he cared about, and it certainly wasn't the Helga in front of him. _At best,_ she argued with herself, _he thinks he loved some idea of me that got away from him and let him fantasize all day. _She couldn't let herself believe him. _It's over, now._

"Arnold..." Helga sighed. She was so tired. He wearied her, being this close to the sun was exhausting, blistering, and cruel to her heart. She despaired to leave his presence again, ever, but she had to get up before she couldn't ever stand up again.

"...The past is the past." Her gaze was level with his. This was maybe the longest conversation she had ever had with him, and she basically had just ended it.

Arnold looked into her face for several beats. He was badly hurt. She saw it plainly on his honest, open features, those beautiful features she would be haunted by, she knew, the rest of her life. She didn't mean a word of it. She thought she had put him in a little corner of her heart, fully sequestered and kept safe, but out of the way. Where he couldn't do any harm anymore. But today taught her, with terrible demonstration, that he _was_ her heart, the whole of it, and she lived to reflect him back on the world.

But she knew he had to let whatever boyish fascination he had for her go, for his sake. Ten years was ten too many to pine for Helga Geraldine Pataki. By being unable to do anything except _ignore _him she proved herself unworthy of his attention. Her failure was one of a spiritual collapse, a total ethical paralytic fit, an inexcusable stalemate.

Her heart dropped again when he stood up from the table. His eyes lowered, finally leaving hers, and he slid a piece of paper onto the table in front of her. Without saying another word, Her Football Head walked out of the cafe, and for all she knew, her life again.

Helga's feet curled under her chair and her hands balled into fists at her sides, her arms squeezing her waist as hard as she could to force air into her lungs. Her face was pressed on the table hard, eyes squeezed shut to keep the hot torrent in her tear ducts from welling up out of control. It was like he took her _liver_ out.

Helga's hands gripped her pink shirt for purchase, and she felt one of the fat tears scream an angry line down her face. It had been many years since she shed any tears for Arnold; tonight, she would double them all.

* * *

Helga woke up to feel her phone buzzing furiously in her messenger bag against her leg.

She raised her head, temporarily unsure of her surroundings. Then she remembered all that had transpired not long ago in the coffee shop at the table she was dozing off on. The sick feeling started to come roaring back, so she pushed it down with the angry fact that she let herself fall asleep in exhaustion from the ordeal.

Crying alone in a coffee shop was _one_ thing, but falling asleep from the _emotions_ of it all was something Helga was not proud of.

Her leg felt the insistent buzz of her phone again. Whoever it was kept calling her, and wouldn't stop, she wagered, until she finally answered. Growling, she bent down to retrieve her pink phone from the bag.

She looked at the contact flashing on her screen. It was Gerald.

_Beep._

"What is it?" The impatience and fury in her voice was evident.

"Shut up Pataki, and just listen." The fury in _his _voice was just as obvious, and shocking. Gerald hardly ever got mad in this way that she could recall.

"Listening," she ground out from between clenched teeth.

"You owe me three big fat favors by my count, am I right, Pataki?"

"Yes. What of it, Afroboy?" She fell to old habits, referring to him by the new nickname she adopted when he started to pick out his magnificent hair into a stately and round afro.

"Time to cash in. Get your band ready for performing, and I mean _tippity fucking top shape._ You and Brainy are gonna play my party this weekend."

"_What?_ No, Gerald, I cannot possibly do that-"

"Shut up Pataki," he spat, venom in his voice clear as day. "I have half a mind to march to that coffee shop and upend your tall blonde ass. He waits to see you for _ten goddamn years_ and this is how you go with it?"

"Gerald, off this subject. Now." Helga tried to sound as intimidating as she could over the phone. It normally worked on the handsome, athletic Gerald, who typically didn't really want to tango with her.

He didn't back down.

"No, you hold up and listen to this: _I'm not going to let you fuck up my plan._ So you better step in line and do as you're told for once in your fucking life."

Helga's brain raced. Her considerable intelligence was able to disassemble the pieces of this conversation that previously remained elusive; like a great jigsaw a piece locked into place here, another snugly fell where its contours found the best fit. Her strong eyebrows knitted up and she breathed a surprised huff into the phone. Gerald was throwing him a party with all their old gang, or at least as many as could be reached in short notice. He was calling in favors, one at a time, from those that owed him from a lifetime of friendly debts. All those _people _with a young lifetime of problems unresolved, old grudges, and old loves. A massive reunion of Troubles for Arnold to see. Gerald was moving big things into place, and making grand gestures, and he was even using Helga's band as a resource. She knew what was happening here.

"You're trying to keep him here, aren't you?" Helga's voice was surprise tempered with outrage, and just the smallest tinge of hope.

"You're damn right, Pataki. What's the problem?" Gerald's voice challenged her to question him. She heard the tremble of anger in his voice.

Helga paused for several beats, her mind quickly racing with all the difficult choices she had just made, struggling with the truth she felt she knew in her heart, and the ugly conclusions that fell upon her as a result. She _knew_ Arnold would have a better life without her. If he even felt anything for her - and Helga was sure beyond any doubting that he didn't - it was a misguided type of gratitude the lovely, loving, and generous Arnold _wanted_ to be something more. She was no good for him, ever, and even though in her deepest desires he was hers, Helga would never let that happen, for his own good.

But that didn't mean he couldn't _stay here_.

Helga lifted the piece of paper Arnold slipped her from the table, unfolding the tiny note and reading the contents entirely. Her eyes widened at the contents, unable to accept what she saw but staring at it nonetheless. She clenched her jaw, and slapped the paper down on the table decisively.

"No problem at all, Afroboy," she boldly announced. "I'm in. What do we do next?"

On the opposite end of the line, Gerald smiled wide, his white teeth showing.

"Baby, all you gotta do next is sing."


	2. Chapter 2 - Unhappy Child

A/N: The story continues with a shift in POV! The song is not mine (I'm not a song writer), nor is it Helga's. The lyrics for this song are from "Gibbon" by This Town Needs Guns. Forgive my lack of creativity, I am just inspired by these songs. I will remove the lyrics upon the Artist's request. As always, R/R is welcome!

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 2: Unhappy Child, Flash Me Your Rottweiler Smile

"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love." - Jane Austen

* * *

Brainy stood on the tiny balcony of the apartment he shared with Helga, silently looking down onto the street while he smoked a cigarette. Tom Waits blared from their stereo system, filling the air in the open terrace even as it came from inside the living room. He leaned against the old white-painted wrought-iron balustrade, feeling it creak under his weight. He'd gotten just a single text from Helga, but it was all he needed to know about what kind of night she had in store for him.

"Football Head."

The formerly awkward, geeky boy had grown into a tall, lithe man, who resembled to any casual observer a blonde Buddy Holly. He especially resembled the comparison now, in his cleanly starched and pressed gingham button-down shirt with extra slim tie, high-quality denim super slim-cut jeans, and spotless brown leather Winklepicker shoes. His sandy blonde hair was high and curly at the top, and kept almost buzzed at the sides and back. His thick framed black glasses - which he found in some vintage shop somewhere - gave him a contemplative look even when his eyes were passive.

Helga's friend and bandmate had lived with her ever since her parents went through the divorce. Helga was seventeen at the time, needed a place to stay, and one of his oldest and closest friends. It was trivial to Brian, whom Helga still called "Brains" or "Brainy" from time to time, to let her move in with him.

Collectively, they made good roommates. They both had a similar expectation of cleanliness and respected each other's privacy.

It helped Brian that she was still probably the great love of his life, though he was far too respectful of her friendship to make any sort of moves on her. It wasn't always easy. The nights she came to him missing Arnold were the worst. Tonight seemed like it would be one of those nights, so Brainy had already cracked open a longneck beer and was pulling from it generously between songs of "Rain Dogs" piping in its controlled lunacy from their sound system.

Brian thoughtfully tried to remember the last time Helga was upset like he was expecting her to be this time around. He could assume plenty about what was coming; Helga was nothing if not _dramatic._ Her mood swings were never severe enough that he was seriously worried, but Brian knew enough to know when to stay away and when she needed someone to shove around, and when she needed someone to argue with. He didn't mind doing any of that for her - in fact, the fact wasn't lost to him in the slightest that his primary role in their friendship was to listen to her and play guitar.

Brainy started playing guitar when he was eleven. Helga had drifted apart from him, no longer having any reason to sulk back and begin one of her dramatic monologues without Arnold around. He withdrew further into his hobby as time went on, eventually becoming extremely proficient. He was actually playing at an open mic in his freshman year of high school when he ran into Helga again, there for the same reason. Several jam sessions later, they were Orphan, the beginnings of their current band.

Over time, they attracted other members that came and went, but the core of Orphan would always be him and Helga. Their shared passion for music blossomed an intense, intimate friendship. Brainy got a job at their local record store at sixteen, and Helga was their most frequent customer. Together, they had amassed what was probably the biggest and most thoroughly maintained record collection in the tricounty area. His efforts and focus were poured into their music, and he had a perfect partner in Helga, who had no end of lyrics and no small amount of vocal talent. Together they experimented with all manner of styles, from mathrock to krautrock and riot grrl. Brainy had found his life's true calling in Orphan, and in this way he relied on Helga just as much, if not more, than she did him.

He was just finishing his cigarette when he heard her come home, the heavy thump of her messenger bag in the kitchen, the percussive stomp of her feet through their living room towards the balcony.

His hand automatically handed her the tallboy, which she snatched from his hand without looking, and drank deeply. He was still leaning over the balcony balustrade, looking down into the alley their apartment faced. The silence between them was familiar, a comforting feeling, and always welcome between two friends who made a habit of creating terrifying and new musical noises for fun. So, he would let her quietly drink and think with him until she was ready to start talking.

A late summer light drizzle started, and she joined it with a frustrated sigh. He flicked his blue eyes her way, finally looking at her as she started to talk.

"Arnold is back in town," she finally said. Brainy's eyebrows went up high, and he pushed his glasses up his nose automatically, turning his body to face her and lean back against the balustrade with his hands. Helga's eyes flicked up and met his, and they looked at each other in silence. Helga finally sighed again and leaned over the edge, resting her chin on her folded arms.

Brainy watched her. She just looked out into the alley like he had been, her full lips pouting in their usual way. It was bad, he could tell by her calm silence that it was bad. No ranting, no screaming, and he hadn't been punched yet.

Wordlessly, Brian pushed away from the balcony, turned off the Tom Waits, and went to their living room to begin setting up their amps and pedals, plugging things in and tuning their guitars for them. He was reverent and careful with their instruments, in the same way he was reverent and careful with her friendship. When he was handling her guitar, Brainy always felt like he was handling Helga in a very real sense. When he ran his fingers along the frets, he couldn't help but imagine his fingers on her neck; strumming chords out felt like running his hands through her hair.

She came into the room and took her guitar from him when it was tuned with a quiet nod of thanks. She roughly jammed the cord into the amp, and started to play their most technically challenging and mathematically complex song.

Brian was immediately there with her, following the syncopated polyrhythm they had jammed out months back with nearly flawless precision.

She was playing roughly, he noticed. She kept missing the downbeats, and had sloppy picking technique, which was how she got when she was drunk or they played for big shows or when she was nervous. Brian noted that her knuckles were red and swollen, and could feel the hot pulse of ghostly impacts on his own hands as he imagined her punching the walls somewhere.

Helga, for her part, seemed lost in the song, her voice the typical scratchy, seeming unpracticed sound she cultivated after phases of melodic twee, hardcore and screamo, and finally the experimental guttural growls of grunge. Brian loved her singing voice, an uneven, rough and lilting sound that sounded all at once fierce and vulnerable. She could sound Springtime sweet if she needed to, but usually kept her typical barbed sarcasm laced within the slightly flat way she sang. Brainy listened with renewed interest in the poetic wrangling of her song, and took note of the revitalized passion behind her voice:

"Once more into breaches I cannot gap.

One more chance to second guess your thoughts.

My friends said that you would be a tough nut to crack.

Come back lets settle this up...

...and down my spine,

the faint tingle keeps me up at night.

So while you dream I lie awake and look to the stars.

No answers forthcoming I find myself locked in your arms."

Helga's voice was initially quiet and low, building and rolling on itself with emotion. Her playing continued to follow the complex mathrock rhythm they learned together, but her picking slipped as the clear choke of emotion threatened to undo the jam session entirely.

"Once more into breaches I cannot gap.

One more chance to second guess your thoughts.

My friends said that you would be a tough nut to crack.

Come back lets settle this up.

Like earth and dust,

We're one and the same; insignificant.

Well who am I to presume that we were all but gone?

Perpetually complexing the simple. I for one am done."

Brainy almost stopped playing, his hand hesitating for a second because of the way she sounded. Helga _always_ played with emotions. That was what she brought to Orphan; beyond her brilliant lyrics and extremely proficient guitar work, she was a creature of unbridled _passion._ The drawback was that when she'd had a little to drink, and was messed up over the possible love of her life, sometimes the song got too _real_. He could feel her sadness clear as day in the dirty feedback of the amplifier, he could hear the frustration and emotive stalemate in her voice. As their song fell into the simple, plodding bridge, designed to connect the more complex and pattern-focused first half of the song to the explosive, kinetic eruption of the second, he noted that she kept her whole body curled over the guitar, her body bobbing with the 4:4 beat. Finally, she started to sing the last verse, bringing her voice up from her bent double form quietly.

"You brought this on yourself.

Our problems had enough time on the shelf.

We made the same mistakes,

lived our lives without the give and the take."

Helga's voice suddenly built volume and force, her previously frustrated, fragile mezzo-soprano raising into a harsh shout as she stood straight up onto her tiptoes, playing and singing directly into the air like an explosion.

"The time we spent apart

served to remind me of when we'd talk!

My one and sole regret

are the thoughts that went left unsaid!"

Helga grew quiet and continued to play the last epilogue of the song's melody with explosive passion, her hands rending the notes out of the guitar in frustration, until finally they both landed on the same closing note and stood in the buzzing silence of the expectant amps.

This wasn't a performance song. This was one of the ones they had never recorded because Helga hated playing it, and got frustrated when her fingers couldn't follow the tabs she wrote for herself. The first time she showed him what she wanted to do, Brainy just cocked an eyebrow at her, shrugged, and started to play along. Her aggressive style lended itself to powerful performances, and challenging music, but it often frustrated her.

Today, he could tell, she was playing the song to frustrate herself.

Brian heard their downstairs neighbor thumping on their floor from below, and Helga looked down at the floor and stomped twice hard. The thumping stopped, and she blew a stray strand of golden hair out of her face, misted by drizzle and sweat in the apartment's temperate heat from the kitchen radiator.

Brian stood passively, looking at her hands. Helga noticed, so she put her hands in her pockets.

"I got mad, okay," she explained. Brian nodded and put his guitar down, sitting on the chair behind him. Helga remained standing, and started to pace. Brainy was ready to hear her out, and after their therapeutic jam session, she was ready to talk.

* * *

"He just showed up out of nowhere. One minute I am ranting about the _Bronte_ sisters of all things and the next he's standing over me like he just fell out of orbit. Then he _helps me up_ and asks me to _get coffee with him_ like this wasn't some kind of impossible dream to me. Like he could just_ get coffee with me_ and I wouldn't die."

Helga held onto her stomach and bent double, dramatically groaning.

"Then he is all handsome and godlike in the comfy mood light, and I swear to you Brian, he was just as sweet and honest and true as he always was. It was like he stepped out of the room and then stepped back in all grown up but exactly the same. Criminy, he even _winked _at me like he used to. But then," Helga faltered, her voice catching with emotion as she continued to recount her awful moment with Arnold. "Then he brought up his letters and the past and our-his _confession_."

Brain could feel that he had started to hold his breath. He had imagined this moment once or twice, but in his fantasies Helga turned Arnold down. He didn't know what would happen if she still reciprocated feelings for Arnold in that way. What would happen to their friendship, their band, or to him.

"And I _turned him down._" Helga sounded so bitterly disappointed in herself. Brian's pulse quickened, too afraid to frighten this long-awaited moment away to speak. He knew he just had to be here for her now, and everything would take care of itself naturally.

"I told him it was all in the past, why did I do that? Oh _God_ I want to take it back, I want to go find him and tell him everything was a lie and beg him to find some shred of his infinite heaven-given patience and forgiveness to _accept_ me. Dammit, god_dammit_ he was right there where I could touch him and all I did was wince and scowl and cry. He must think I am repulsive and awful, there isn't any coming back from this, it's the final end!"

Helga was on her knees, pounding the floor with her fists, a disappointed and angry look on her face devoid of any of the sharp fury Brian was used to. He held onto the arms of his chair for purchase, still dizzy from the fulfillment of one of his dreams.

"And then Gerald calls me and cashes in one of those three fucking magic favors he got out of me, and _fucking get this_, it's for Orphan to play this huge fuckoff reunion party or something he is throwing. _Everybody_ from 118 is going to be there, Brains."

He thought she looked legitimately scared when she said that. He certainly felt scared. She didn't seem to notice.

"I can't sing _any _of our songs there, they're all about _him. _Everyone will know, they'll all hear me singing about Arnold and so will he, and it will just be over, it will all be _over. Arnold will leave forever again._ How could Gerald do this to me? I was never nasty enough to him to deserve _this._"

Her head fell back and she looked up at their ceiling, covered in old music and film posters they collected from flea markets and thrift shops.

"Gerald then spills it that he has this plan for Arnold to stay," she croaked to the ceiling. Brain sat back further in the chair, surprised. "And apparently I am part of the plan. He wouldn't give me many details, but apparently he has this crazy plan to show Arnold he has to stick around again, that he _wants_ to stay, but step one is that I play at this party."

Brian sighed, rubbing his chin with his palm. That was heavy.

"So I agreed." Helga turned to look at him again. "I will die of shock and embarrassment when Arnold hears these songs, but, I can't help myself, I want him to stay. I just can't help myself when it's him, and so I need you to agree to play with me."

Helga scooted over to Brian on her knees, her hands resting on his legs, and she looked up at him.

"Please, Brian, _please_" she begged. Her voice was full of all the sincere helplessness she could muster. "Help me do this, because if I have to, I will go up there alone, and it'll be a big fucking mess. You have to help me."

Brainy looked up, away from Helga, and out at the open balcony where the drizzle was picking up into a light rain. He wasn't sure that this day would ever happen, that he would be forced to help Helga with Arnold again, that is _directly. _He had spent many nights staying up before, listening to her worry and fret over the idea of never seeing him again. He had held her hand when she had crying fits because she saw someone with the same stupidly shaped head somewhere and it wasn't him. He had even let her fistfight him once, in the alley, because Olga threw out some of her old shrine stuff. He was familiar with the Arnold Problem.

But not quite like this. Helga knew how he felt. He didn't have to say it. _He never would. _She knew she was asking him something that would hurt him. But Brian knew she needed him, and knew what it was like to need someone and have them not follow through. He wouldn't put Helga through the same experience.

Brainy looked down at Helga as she rested her cheek on his knee, still looking up at her friend and roommate. Brian nodded. He would help her.

* * *

Helga chewed Brainy's nachos thoughtfully at their dinner table later, her mouth full and a slight smile on her face.

"Damn, Brains. You sure can cook nachos like a pro. Not half bad at all." Brian smiled to himself, facing away from her as he washed the dish he had eaten with in their sink. Helga chewed her food happily; a nice pile of junk food always brightened her spirits, and she could usually count on Brian to have just the right thing ready whenever she was pissed off or upset.

The immediate time after she asked Brainy to help her on her knees was a little awkward for them both, of course. Helga rarely, if ever, asked Brian for help directly. Usually he was astute enough to anticipate what she would want or need, and if it wasn't too much trouble for him, he would simply _do_ it without being asked. He'd learned a lot about Helga from the years he watched her in wheezing silence, and that came with immediate benefits now that they lived together.

The awkwardness passed, however, when Helga had grown self-conscious of herself prostrated at her friend's feet, stood up abruptly, and started pacing the room with a serious look written in her thick eyebrows.

"We need to figure out who's going to do bass and drums this time," she grumbled, the tall blonde moving quickly from her bedroom back to the living room, slapping her open palm with a fist. "I'm not letting that crustpunk _swine_ Harold near my stage again. If I get told how every little thing I do isn't _punk_ at this stupid party of Gerald's by Mr. Self-Proclaimed Crustiest Punk in Hillwood, I'll wring his unwashed _neck._"

Brainy stood up and started making them nachos while Helga thought out loud. The duo had played with a variety of their old friends from PS118 who had ended up in the music scene of Hillwood; Harold, Cid, Stoop Kid, and even Stinky plucked his twelve string guitar with them for a show once.

"And Harold's not even that _good_, his bass is all over the place. What about Stoop Kid?" She was more asking herself than she was directly asking Brian, but he still shrugged his shoulders for her from the kitchen counter, nodding a little to indicate he would work.

"Yeah, Stoop's not half bad on skins, not half bad at all," Helga mused. "Think we can get him up to speed in such short notice? He's not exactly the swiftest sparrow in the tree, kid's basically a fourth grader brains-wise...but he knows his stuff, I'm sure he'll work." Helga's pacing resumed as she worked out who would play bass for their show. Brainy and her always had to do this right before a performance, work through their list of known musicians that weren't previously tied to any sort of playing obligations, and basically bribe them with beers and the threat of Helga's fists. The ritual they currently practiced, carefully stepping through the motions together, was one of comfort for Brian and Helga. It told him that she was on her way towards normalcy.

Then, he had set the nachos out on the table, and Helga ravenously tore into them.

"Bout time, Brains. I was _starving._" Brian chewed his plate quietly with her, and they shared a fresh, cool beer, pulling from the tallboy bottle between bites.

Finally, when they were finished eating and Brian was cleaning up, Helga slapped the table suddenly.

"I've got it! Helga, old girl, you're _a genius._" She flashed Brian a haughty, proud grin, her teeth showing wide from between her full, pouty lips.

"Gerald wants us to play so bad," she started, and Brian saw where this was headed. Trouble, but that was typically Helga's style. "I happen to know Froboy _slaps a mean bass._ We'll just tell him that he has to play, or the show's off. It's perfect either way! Froboy will either chicken out and then we don't have to play the stupid party, or he goes up and we get to kick his ass with our tunes. And if he _does_ agree, we get the better part of a week to figure out what his plan is. Oh-ho-ho man, Helga, old girl, you are just _too_ devious."

Brian didn't mention to Helga that she had made it clear that she very much _wanted_ to play this show, or that she previously begged him to help her. Helga had to convince herself of the difficult actions she had to take, or else her heart would falter. If bullying Gerald into playing bass with them was what she needed to go through with this, then Brainy would just play along.

She was lead guitar anyway.

* * *

Helga reached over at Brain, pawing for the bottle of beer they were sharing. It was their fifth now, several records into the evening and plenty of Helga's rants behind them. Brian obediently passed the baton, figuring that she should be pretty sloshed right about now. They'd split four bottled 24oz. tallboys, and only eaten junk. Helga was hardly a lightweight but drinking was still a new hobby for them both, taken up because Brian's boss at the record store preferred to give bonuses in cases of beer rather than money. It was infrequent enough of an event that the pair had only ever gotten really drunk - sloppy, confession drunk - once. But he could tell that they were headed there quickly tonight, going through their supply in the fridge quickly.

Helga screwed up her face. "Beer's warm." Brain looked at her, his less-than-gentle buzz lifting his spirits and making him contemplative. He _really_ wanted to push himself over into her personal space and start kissing her.

He dismissed the thought as soon as he was able, which unfortunately for him took several moments of him looking at her full, pouty lips. Helga noticed.

"D-don't stare at me like that," she slurred, pointing at him with the hand that held the bottle. "Y'stay over there, right there. Don't move a muscle, Brains." She held her hand up for emphasis, here eyebrows going high. "Stay."

Brian would listen to her. The last thing she needed was one of her best friends and roommate complicating what was an already complicated day by throwing his romantic, more-than-friendly feelings into the mix.

Brian also was pretty sure that if he started to make a move on her now, she'd reciprocate, and they'd end up tangled in limbs and lips and _really_ screw things up. Helga was passionate, and _physical._ She was in the gym often, and boasted abundant energy and critical verve. As far as he knew she'd never been touched by a man in that way, and had to imagine that her hormones and needs were piling up. All the frustration from the day, all the tragedy of Arnold's return, and all their years of closeness of heart and nearness of physical proximity no doubt meant that Helga was surely thinking the same thing he was.

What would happen if they just fooled around a little as friends?

The thought had occurred to Brian many times before, and he was sure it had to Helga. How could it _not _enter her head, when they shared everything, lived together, and were both obviously attracted to each other. It was always on _his_ mind, anyway, what his life would be like if they stopped being roommates and started being _lovers._ But he wouldn't make the first move - he knew that she had to come to him, or he would be overstepping the boundaries of their relationship they outlined together when she moved in with him.

So Brian kept his distance and solemnly, physically ached for Helga while she tortured herself over another man. So he was surprised by the sudden flop of her bare foot in his lap, followed by powerful flex of her toes and ankle. She sniffed and leaned on a single elbow, taking a pull from the bottle.

"Footrub?" Her toes waggled for emphasis. Brian's pulse raced. Was this it? Was this the moment the line was crossed, and he could _touch_ her? Was she inviting him in?

His hand reached for her foot, stopping an inch away when they both heard the dramatic, harsh buzzing of her phone from her messenger bag inches away from where they lounged in the room.

Helga's foot shot off his lap as she rolled tipsily to her bag, fishing for the phone with one hand, the beer bottle in the other. Brian's hand hovered in the spot where her foot had been, watching her with a bitter feeling of being cheated out of something.

"Yes, hello, what is it, talk!" Helga's voice was full of aggression, the way she got when she was embarrassed or got caught doing something that she felt threatened her reputation.

"Yeah, I did. He did. How do you know that?" Helga still sounded like she'd been caught doing something, but he thought he could recognize the voice of Phoebe on the other end of the line. He couldn't hear what she was saying over the record they were playing, and had to settle for eavesdropping in on Helga's side of the conversation.

"You _knew?_ You knew he was coming and didn't tell me?" That sounded bad. Her voice took a dangerous pitch, her volume rising significantly.

"Yes, well, you'd better explain fast, before I hang this phone up and come kick your ass," she started to threaten Phoebe, before she was interrupted by something Phoebe said.

"So you know about Gerald's plan too? How do you figure in? Talk fast, Pheebs, this better be good." Brian stood up from his spot, and Helga looked up at him with a scowl on her face, then apologetically smiled at him. It was a surprisingly tender gesture from Helga. Brian leaned down and took the bottle from her, and walked to the kitchen to get some physical space between them.

"Alright, look, I trust you, but only _just barely enough_ to play along. I want Ice Cream to stay," she used her old code for Arnold with Phoebe almost all the time, even when it was just Brian listening. "but I don't intend on making a damn fool of myself in front of everyone we've ever known to do it. So you'd better, you know, _fucking include me_ when you make plans that include more than my casual involvement."

Helga sat up, rubbing at her temples. She was sobering up, and getting cranky from the uncomfortable feeling of her thoughts being far more lucid than her brain could keep up. Brian put the beer on the counter, and started to pour her a water. Striding across the room in silence, Brian handed Helga the glass of water, which she started drinking as she listened to Phoebe talk, nodding a thanks to him for the offer.

"Alright, that sounds good. Let's meet at the diner. I need pancakes and waffles. Plus I gotta tell you what _happened,_ Jesus Christ it was awful, Pheebs. Yeah, I already told Brainy. Yeah. He's right here…You want to talk to him?" Helga's last question had the clear note of surprise in it. She looked up at Brain, and he shrugged, reaching for the phone when Helga offered it to him.

"Uh...hello." Brian never knew how to start a conversation over the phone, and sounded as uncomfortable as he was.

"Brian," Phoebe started. "Arnold's doing something _incredibly_ ill-advised, short-sighted, and irreversible in an ever decreasing amount of time. I need you to promise me, for Helga's own best interests, that if you somehow discover, uncover, or unravel the truth that _you won't tell her."_ Brian's eyebrows went up high. He looked down at Helga, who was looking up at him, genuinely confused and concerned.

"Uh...okay." He agreed, Brian had kept things from Helga many times in the past to keep her happy. It wasn't something he enjoyed doing, but things became muddled and murky when she was involved.

"Excellent. All that is required of you is to keep doing what you do for her, provide her moral support and the ear of friendship, and _remember not to tell._ No matter what, Brian." Her voice was as serious as he'd ever heard it. "If she finds out at a critically unstable juncture in time _it will be disastrous._ Everything will be jeopardized, all of it, including your friendship to her, to everyone. We'll lose Helga."

Brian felt his breath stop short in his throat. What on earth was Arnold _doing_?

"Uh...I understand." Brian finally breathed out.

"Good. Now, Helga is going to have questions for you regarding the tense and secretive nature of our conversation. I have advised Helga to keep a safe barrier of distance between you two in the past, so if you fall on that excuse she won't suspect anything. We'll handle the rest at the diner. Rendezvous with us there ASAP."

"Uh...Us?" Brian was more and more confused.

"Gerald and myself. It's time to illuminate you both on the plan. And please, Brian, _don't tell Helga._" Brian then heard the other line go blank. Phoebe had suddenly hung up. He'd never heard such urgency in her before, even considering how high strung she was.

"What the hell was that?" Helga's strong, dark eyebrows were as high as they could manage to go, vanishing beneath her blonde bangs swept to the side.

"Talk on the way," Brian struggled to answer her. He knew he'd get the third degree the entire span of their short walk to the diner. Helga gave him a look that promised his premonition was correct.

Brian handed Helga her phone, and helped her up from her spot on the floor. He reached over and pulled his corduroy sportcoat off their vintage brass coat hanger, and got his keys to lock up. Helga, taking his cues, shoved her feet into her pink converse and grabbed her bag.

The two of them left their apartment, and headed to the diner.


	3. Chapter 3 - The Orphan They Cut in Half

A/N: Another POV shift. Expect these, they're kind of my favorite. Also, it occurs to me that for a HA! fanfic, there's not a whole lot of Arnold in it. That changes next chapter, forgive me! The next chapter will be a bit longer coming, mostly due to the length. I will probably post a Helga-focused mini-chapter after this one to tide you fine folks over until then! As always, R/R is welcome and encouraged.

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 3 - The Orphan They Cut in Half

"The more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes" - Vladimir Nabokov

* * *

Phoebe Heyerdahl could hardly believe what she was hearing, that if she had not trusted the source of information so unconditionally, she would reject the thought utterly out of hand.

She was sitting opposite Gerald Johanssen, her long-time friend and ex boyfriend, simply at a loss of words immediately following the bombshell that the handsome young man dropped on her. The pretty, petite girl was finally able to register that she was staring at Gerald, who was staring back, and for an instant the intimacy of their gaze was enough to cause her to break eye contact and look down at her gently steaming cup of Oolong tea.

"Yeah, it shocked me too," Gerald finally said. She could hear the hint of disappointment in him, the slight acid of a bitter memory. He was clearly affected and upset by the news, which also surprised Phoebe. "When Arnold told me I nearly flew myself down there to smack some sense into him."

"But if what you assert is truthful, Gerald, don't you think we should immediately inform Helga?" Her thoughts immediately fell to her best friend, who had been pining miserably for ten years over the foolish, heroic young man in question. Phoebe had been there for it all, closest to the misery and the drama, had helped Helga over the years work herself up from a vast, cavernous depression into what was a manageable baseline level of simple misery. It had taken every lesson in patience Phoebe ever learned from her father to pull off.

Now, though, everything was threatening to unravel. Phoebe's primary interest was to get ahead of the coming disaster, and set mitigating forces in play before it made landfall and drowned everyone.

"Actually, that's the biggest reason I called you up," Gerald started. He had her undivided attention, of course, when he called her out of the blue and asked her to get coffee and pie with him.. She had no trace of bitterness over the end of their high school romance-it had happened simply too long ago for the mature, intelligent girl to bear Gerald any ill will. It helped that she was still very attracted to him, and still counted him as one of her closest friends. They spoke often enough since Phoebe ended up in the Ivy League University of her choice, but distance had a way of drifting old friends - even lovers - apart. She was all too happy to take the chance to drive the short trip back to Hillwood, see Helga, and have a coffee date with Gerald again. She had not been anticipating the reason could be _this._

"See, I think my man Arnold is making a mistake." Phoebe's slender eyebrows lifted over the rim of her glasses when he confessed his analysis. "I always said he was a bold kid, but don't you think he's too young, too nice, and too _selfless _to make this kind of decision and not tell anyone?"

"Gerald, I'm sure that Arnold has carefully weighed the advantages and disadvantages of the possible scenarios and settled on the most equitable outcome for all the parties involved. Why do you assume he has made his choice in a vacuum? Doesn't he have the watchful guidance of his mother and father from which to draw wisdom?"

"That's the thing, Pheebs, he hasn't told them yet."

Phoebe almost squeaked with surprise, she was so taken off guard by that revelation. Arnold was honest to a _fault_ and totally incapable of guile. Besides the anomalous April Fool's Day incident, he had never managed to trick Phoebe or Helga or _anyone._ The fact that he had managed to keep something _this_ significant from his parents made Phoebe uneasy.

She smoothed out the black pencil skirt she was wearing, looking at her galaxy print leggings as she unraveled the scenario for digestion and the best next steps. She noticed that Gerald watched her with interest, and felt a private little thrill that she was getting to spend some private time with him again.

_Focus, Phoebe. What is imperative is that you are able to successfully navigate the emotional maelstrom that is sure to come when Helga finds out. Consider the alternatives, and calculate the variable scenarios to ensure that the damage is minimized._

Gerald cleared his throat, and Phoebe jumped, caught in her woolgathering and dissembling.

"So...I think I have a plan,:" Gerald carefully began. "Arnold's said he's coming back to Hillwood." Phoebe's eyes widened. _That_ complicated things. "So, I say, we stir the pot."

"Stir the...pot?" Phoebe scrunched her nose at the colloquialism. She wasn't sure how it applied in this specific scenario.

"Yeah, girl, stir the pot. Listen, what is Arnold if not a busybody? And he practically can't help himself when he sees trouble, right?"

Phoebe nodded, her mind racing forward along Gerald's suggested path, seeing in advance where he was going with this.

"So you suggest that we get Arnold and Helga together, and allow the immediate dramatic upheaval to unravel Arnold's intended course of action."

"Hey, it could happen." Gerald's easy smile spread wide. Phoebe's cheeks flushed slightly, but she continued.

"Do you perhaps think that exposure to Helga will cause Arnold to rethink what you assert he has spent little time considering already, and perhaps...bring them together?"

Gerald shrugged for her. "I dunno man. I really don't. Helga's _Helga._ Helga G. Pataki, we're talking about. Who knows what that girl's gonna do when she sees Arnold again." Phoebe knew. Helga would explode like a shell volcano that had been building geologic pressure over eons. "But what I _do_ know is that my man is being too bold here. Nobody in this world sets him straight faster than Helga G. Pataki."

Phoebe had to admit, the idea was cunning, if less than subtle. But the plan was too precipitous; if neither of the two performed to the expected behaviors, nothing would come of it. It needed augmentation to have any chance of success.

"Gerald, forgive my impertinence in asking, but you still possess the little black book with Fuzzy Slippers' dossiers within, correct?" Gerald's right eyebrow cocked.

"Yeah, why? What's it got to do with this?"

"Well, while I have determined that there is merit in your suggestion, I would posit that the probable outcomes are too varied and unpredictable. If we simply arrange for those two to have some serendipitous rendezvous, it is just as likely that Helga, in her panic, will push him away again. And then Arnold's fate is sealed, I am afraid."

Gerald thought about what she said, then nodded when he fully grasped the meaning of it.

"To that end, I suggest that we utilize the resources at hand; I have heard that within the dossiers of the little black book, is enough, shall we say, 'dirt' on everybody from PS118 to effectively wield significant influence over them."

Gerald's eyebrow cocked ever higher. He rubbed at the close-shaven beard on his jaw.

"Could be, Pheebs, could be. You thinkin' we bring everybody back together?"

"Precisely."

Gerald folded his strong arms over his red jersey. Phoebe couldn't help herself; she examined the strong cords of muscles that roped from his biceps to his wrists. Gerald had always been athletic, but he really approached scholastic sports with enthusiasm now that he was in college. It had been effective in augmenting his already considerable attractiveness to Phoebe.

"Let's say we throw Arnold a 'Welcome Home' party?" Phoebe nodded at Gerald's suggestion. It was a good idea. A large, significant social gathering, liberally lubricated by alcohol and populated by a lifetime's supply of old friends, rivals, and crushes. It was the ideal environment to expose Arnold to Helga and let sparks fly.

"We need to get Helga's band to play at the party," Gerald suddenly blurted out. Phoebe jumped at his suggestion, and then furiously worked out in her thoughts what that would accomplish, and what it risked.

"I think that is a very high risk, high reward scenario. If you have observed any of Helga's songs, you would hopefully be astute enough to immediately recognize the subject matter as almost exclusively Ice Crea-er, I mean, Arnold."

Gerald nodded, enthusiastically. "Yeah, exactly! How you think that's gonna make my man Arnold feel, when after ten years of writing Helga all those letters and getting nothing back, he comes to the party and she's up on stage singin' about how bad she's got it for him?" Phoebe thought that Gerald had adjusted remarkably well to the thought of Helga having feelings for Arnold; when he initially discovered Arnold _kissing_ Helga when they were ten in the jungles of San Lorenzo, Phoebe vividly remembered the hyperventilation, the shrieking, and the manic rants against this reality as being impossible according to every known law of creation. And here he was, frankly including what he thought he knew about Helga's feelings in the difficult equation of Arnold plus Helga.

"I can only imagine the turmoil that would bring to his heart. If he was unsure in the slightest about his chosen course of action, it would certainly suffice enough to give him pause. Perhaps rethink his decision entirely."

"And you throw in everybody from PS118, all unloading all their pent up shit from the years? Arnold's a trouble magnet. Guarantee at the end of the night he's thinking about moving back to Hillwood."

"That is definitely a possible outcome," Phoebe nodded. She sipped at her now cooling tea. The woody flavor and slightly astringent bitterness refreshed her mind. "But we must remain mindful of the fact that when Helga finds out, her reaction will likely be a violent outburst. Perhaps Arnold has matured enough to weather such a reaction, but if there is confusion within him it might harden his heart all the same. And then we are faced with the original dilemma, without any means of escape."

"Shit. This is too hard, man. I'm not meant for this kind of thing." Gerald took a deep breath, leaning back in the booth to look at the ceiling. Phoebe looked at his large Adam's apple, then up at his brown eyes.

"Luckily you have me, an expert on such maneuvering," Phoebe cheerfully sighed. Even though what they faced was serious, irreversible, and disastrous, she couldn't help but admit she still enjoyed Gerald's company as much as when they were dating. Of course, when she got into University, they amicably parted, both recognizing that the challenges of a long distance relationship would mostly likely only serve to end their friendship. It had been at this exact diner, in fact, in this same booth that they had embraced once last time as lovers, and then shook hands again as friends.

And though she rarely made bold moves herself, the sometimes sneaky Phoebe felt like she didn't want the evening to simply be about Arnold and Helga.

"You have become very handsome in six months, Gerald," she finally said.

Gerald lifted his head up and looked at her, a little smile on his face. "Oh yeah? Did I?"

"Indeed. I'm very glad you called me, regardless of the unpleasant matter at hand. Strategizing with you is very…" Phoebe ran her finger along the ceramic rim of her teacup. "stimulating."

Gerald's eyebrows waggled, and then he smiled one of his trademark smooth smiles at her. Phoebe had to stifle a giggle, she was so tickled by his reaction.

"Well hell, baby. Why don't we call it a night for Arnold, and start the night over, just us like old times?"

Phoebe's eyes flashed with excitement over the rims of her glasses. That interested her a great deal. The rest of the details of the plan could wait. After all, Gerald had invited her for drinks and dessert, and she would have her chocolate.

* * *

Phoebe and Gerald sat in the booth together, on the side facing the door so that they could see Helga and Brainy coming. it had been a little less than a month ago that they had met here for the first time in six months to discuss the situation with Arnold. Phoebe blushed privately at the memory of how that night had concluded, very aware of the male presence of Gerald sitting next to her. His hand was on her knee casually while he drank his coffee. The secretive, intimate contact thrilled her.

"They better get here soon," he sighed into his steaming cup.

"I stressed the urgency of the matter to both Helga and Brian," Phoebe assured him. "I especially stressed to Brian the importance of not revealing the truth to Helga, should he somehow discover the secret."

"Good call, Pheebs. That guy don't say much? But he listens too _damn_ much. Who knows what he'll find out."

"Even if he were to discover everything, it is unlikely that he would jeopardize the plan by telling Helga. I, uh, put the fear in him."

Gerald laughed briefly, but became very serious as he saw the darting flash of blonde in the window. The two of them straightened up right away, hands above the table, preparing for when Helga would storm in.

She didn't disappoint. The glass door slammed open, the little bell above the entryway jingling out of control at the nearly tectonic violence of the motion. She was soaked, of course, because the late Summer weather had picked up into a steady unseasonal rain. It somehow added to the terror of her entrance, like a literal feminine force of oceanic nature had burst in and would lay her terrible vengeance on all she surveyed. Phoebe felt her heart leap into her throat-somehow even after decades of friendship, Helga always managed to shock and surprise her with her level of Amazonian ferocity.

"Alright, start talking right the fuck now, Froboy!" Helga demanded, slamming her wet messenger bag onto the booth table and leaning over them menacingly. Phoebe watched Helga stare down Gerald many times in the past, but rarely had he literally _withered_ under her as he was doing now, shrinking like a dried up slug beneath a harsh and angry sun.

Phoebe started to talk, noting that Brainy had walked up behind Helga to loom above them, silent features quiescent and simply observing.

"Helga, calm down and take a seat. We're going to calmly share a slice of pie, and then we'll discuss what is going on in exhaustive detail. Threatening Gerald is neither productive nor necessary."

Helga shot Phoebe a hot, angry look. Helga rarely, if ever, got mad at Phoebe. It was always about Arnold when she did. Phoebe swallowed the awkward fear she felt when her best friend was in a fury, and stared back up at her. Helga seemed to calm down a bit when Phoebe didn't back down, and then shoved herself into the booth, crossing her arms over her pink flannel shirt clinging to her chest.

"Alright fine. You want to calmly share some pie, then you're buying, Froboy. I want it a la mode, too, and don't skimp on the whipped cream."

Gerald sighed, not daring to roll his eyes but still visibly frustrated.

"Yeah, sure Pataki. You want anything, Brian?" He nodded to the tall boy that had managed to sit in the booth next to Helga without Phoebe noticing.

Brainy shook his head, and in the brief pause in the conversation, Phoebe grabbed the reins of control and began to explain to Helga and Brian the carefully chosen details of their plan, selectively opting to omit the specific pieces about Arnold's secret.

* * *

"Where you goin', girl?" Gerald's voice was playful and sleepy in the darkness as Phoebe slipped from the bed and started to dress.

"We still have a lot to work out, Gerald, and I thought I could energize our minds with a pot of fresh tea." Phoebe finished slipping her skirt onto her hips, smiling at the boy who lounged just barely covered by the sheets of his bed. His athletic form thrilled her, even now, but she had tasks at hand to prioritize her attentions.

"Mm, mm-mm!" Gerald tsked. "You're like the Energizer bunny. Between you and Arnold, Gerald Johanssen is headed to an early grave." Gerald flashed his white teeth, and rolled over onto his stomach to gather his clothing as well.

Phoebe made her way quietly into the frat house kitchen. She was sure that girlfriends-was that what she was now?-were no stranger to these walls, but it still felt slightly _intrepid_ to find herself stalking barefoot through the old wooden hallways to heat up a late night pot of tea. When she had the single teapot she could find on the burner, quietly rolling to a steam, she had a moment to thoughtfully chew on the Arnold problem.

_There are variables we do not know, and variables we don't know that we don't know._ She chewed on her thumb, her thoughts always fell to her favorite strategists when she was having trouble. _If we bait Arnold out, he may reveal the reasons behind his decision. But it carries a lot of risk, and relies upon the trust he has in us._ Phoebe frowned as the teapot whistled itself into readiness.

That was the hardest part. Deceiving their closest friends. If their plan was going to have any chance at all, it would necessitate the careful manipulation of their two best friends, and people they loved. _Nobody would be lying,_ she reasoned with herself. _Appropriate dissemination of intelligence is strategy 101. And it is for a noble cause._

That last thought made her pause as she was scooping the loose leaf tea she found into the teapot. _Was_ it a noble cause? That was one of those known unknowns, she recognized. They didn't know why Arnold would do something so dramatic, so permanent like this, so unannounced. _Arnold at least thinks he has a good reason. It is important for us to discover his reason right away._

Phoebe walked the quiet solitary stroll back to Gerald's room, closing the door behind her and setting the tea set on his desk.

"Bless the baby angel responsible for days like today," Gerald sighed. Phoebe stifled another giggle with her hand, handing him the small cup of steaming hot green tea.

"We need to find out why Arnold is doing this first, Gerald."

He blew over his teacup, nodding in agreement. "Yeah, I know. My man's _got_ to have what he _thinks_ is a good reason."

Phoebe finally spoke her biggest worry aloud. "What if he is sincere, and this will make him happy? We would be dishonoring our friendship to him...we would be dishonoring our friendship to Helga."

Gerald sipped at the tea, wincing a little at the bitter flavor. He always did that, but he never argued with Phoebe when she poured him a cup.

"I've thought about that...believe me. It's all I think about. If he's serious, and this is gonna make him happy, then all we can do is cheer him on. And I'll be there." Phoebe nodded, feeling the same way. "But," he started, and she felt hopeful. "I don't hear that in his voice. He sounds _tired_. I'd be, I dunno, _excited._ Happy. Pumped, hell, I'd be pretty much any kind of way but _tired as hell._"

Phoebe nodded, settling down on his bed next to Gerald. The details of the plan she had spent the better part of their evening together ruminating on began to take shape in her mind. She had to test them out on the most reliable source she had. Gerald. "I propose that we compose our plan in three stages. The first stage is the preliminary reintroduction of Arnold to Hillwood, and in particular Helga."

"Keep talking, beautiful, I love when you get all Patton on me." Phoebe swatted at Gerald for his flirtatious comment.

"Remain focused, Gerald. The second stage requires the exact opposite; _isolation._" Phoebe used her hands to pantomime the motion of segregating Arnold from the rest of Hillwood for emphasis. Gerald held his lightly bearded chin thoughtfully. Phoebe thought it gave him a distinguished look, even if she knew it was grown merely for the superstitious purposes of his baseball team's winning streak.

"Isolation? What's your game? I thought we wanted Arnold _around_ everybody."

"We want precisely that. But recall that Arnold is most troubled when he knows problems exist and yet can do nothing about them - if we devise a way to suddenly segregate him from the majority of the class of PS118, I believe the result will be a _multiplicative_ increase if effect on his hopefully wayward heart."

"Phoebe, he's spent ten years away. I think he can handle a little bit more."

"Ignorance has shielded him from the details of all the problems left unresolved. Arnold is at heart an optimist; I am sure he convinced himself that his presence was ultimately not necessary to Hillwood, and that everybody got along just fine."

"So we show Arnold that isn't the case, then keep him from being able to fix anything."

"Precisely."

Gerald leaned back against the headboard of his bed, folding his hands behind his small, carefully groomed afro. He started to nod as he began to digest the particular genius of her suggestion. Now all they needed was the right leverage. Of that, he had plenty.

"I think I see what you mean, Pheebs, but, what about this? I feel like we need to make this second phase a two-parter."

Phoebe tucked her silken black hair behind her ear and glasses. She was intrigued by Gerald's suggestion, and impressed that she found such a worthy partner in this venture in Gerald. He'd always been one for _telling_ grand schemes; Phoebe was surprised and delighted that he was beginning to be as adept at planning them.

"Make your proposal, then," she smiled at him.

"I think we need to keep Arnold away from everybody - _except Helga G. Pataki_." Gerald smiled back at her, obviously pleased with himself.

"Interesting. You're suggesting that we saturate exposure to Helga, a known pressure point and, we are presuming, a weakness in his heart, while simultaneously removing him from any agency vis a vis the conflicts he encounters at the party between our old friends of PS118."

Gerald didn't seem surprised that she saw right through the heart of it.

"I'll call in favor number two with Pataki, and maybe the four of us spends a weekend at the Pataki beach house."

Phoebe's smile widened quite a bit. _Gerald you are beautiful,_ she thought. She had no argument with this suggestion. It was brilliance, elegance defined. It accomplished all the desired goals for phase two, and had the added bonus of providing everybody with a much-needed vacation in the final weeks of Summer.

"Gerald...do I need to tell you how brilliant that is?" Phoebe just shook her head with a kind of puzzled joy. They had _never_ communicated so effectively before. Somehow, the Gerald before her was ten times more attractive than the Gerald she remembered from high school.

"Yeah, at least one more time. And besides, we don't know if phase one will even work. We might be planning for something that will never happen."

"Yes. That is very true…" Phoebe felt the wind in her sails falter a little, and had to remember they were dealing in very high stakes.

She stared at the mess of the tea leaves at the bottom of her cup, wondering if one could really tell the future by the pattern of their scattering. Such augury would have made everything exceedingly simpler.

* * *

"We want to convince Arnold to stay in Hillwood," Phoebe calmly began.

"Yeah, I gathered that one," Helga rudely interrupted, chewing her piece of cherry pie. Somehow her anger still seemed like a viable threat, soaked as she was from the late summer showers.

"Well, the details of this plan are extremely _particular._ If steps are taken out of order or if we start improvising the whole operation unravels, to quite the dramatic conclusion." Phoebe felt that she was legitimately frustrated with Helga. It was rare that her best friend ever pushed her to this extreme level of consternation. Phoebe knew it was because Helga hated being in the dark about anything, especially things involving Ice Cream.

"Well it's all perfectly lovely that you and _Geraldo_ cooked up some kind of cockamamy chess game to play with Hair Boy, but I deeply _resent_ the fact that I am apparently one of your _pawns_." Helga was jabbing a piece of pie at the end of her long fork at Phoebe in dramatic intervals, emphasizing her point quite literally at the end of steel.

"Well to be fair, Helga, you are not _a pawn_, if I borrow your analogy. You are closer to _the queen._"

Helga's eyebrow arched up. Phoebe could tell that she liked that. One of the surest ways to get in with Helga was flattery; she couldn't help but enjoy praise and positive attention when she was used to never receiving attention at all.

"Keep talking, I like the sound of this." Helga continued to dig into the pie, her temper seeming to fade. Everybody visibly relaxed when she finally started to ease up.

"Gerald and I have worked together on what we think is the best strategy for convincing Arnold not only that he wants to stay in Hillwood, but that Hillwood _needs_ him back."

"Yeah, like Pheebs said," Gerald interjected, "it's all about helping Arnold remember why he loved it here, and why most of our messed up lives went to the pot without him."

Helga chewed her pie slowly, glancing at Brainy. Phoebe wasn't sure what that look meant-the relationship between her best friend and her best friend's one-time stalker always puzzled her. She wasn't sure what to make of their bonds, though she could tell they ran deeply. She reminded herself to scrutinize Brainy a lot closer in the time she was in Hillwood working on the plan.

"Alright...this all sounds really _neat_ and _tidy_ and all, but, how am I the queen of the board? I'm assuming Arnold is the king."

Phoebe nodded. "Yes, you are correct. The game is won by capturing the king, so, in this respect, your analogy is accurate. We are attempting to capture Arnold such that he has no escape that does not itself lead to his capture. In this continued analogy, you are the queen because you are the most valuable piece, and the most dangerous to the opposition. You are the focus of most of the plans, because your relationship with Arnold is so..." Phoebe hesitated, grasping for the right word. "Singular."

"Groovy. Really, that's great, Pheebs, and props to you and Gerald for all the brilliance, yadda yadda yadda...only, Chess isn't a one player game. Who are you playing against?"

Phoebe stiffened in the booth next to Gerald. She hadn't anticipated Helga cutting through the analogy so acutely. She wasn't surprised, Helga was always at least her intellectual match, but her focus on the creative pursuits of art, music, and literature kept her brilliance focused further away from the raw _logic_ puzzles Phoebe was used to.

"And for that matter, how does this," Helga slipped the piece of paper she got from Arnold on the table in front of them, "factor into the game?"

Phoebe and Gerald leaned forward to read what was on the paper. Brainy didn't move, apparently already aware of what was written on it.

"_Christmas Day. We say goodbye."_

Phoebe's eyes narrowed. So, they had their time limit now. Gerald looked at Phoebe with concern. This put a lot of pressure on their plans.

Helga chewed last piece of flakey golden crust of her pie, watching the two of them with what appeared to be casual interest. Phoebe was impressed that Helga managed to so thoroughly sequester the agony she must feel thanks to that note. Yet again, Phoebe was surprised by her long time best friend.

Phoebe sighed, closing her eyes for a moment, about to spill the whole sad tale to Helga. She felt Gerald's hand on her shoulder, looking at him for some support. He wasn't even looking at her.

"Arnold's not staying here. That's when he's going back - or moving on to his next destination." Gerald didn't even have to lie, even if that wasn't the full story. Phoebe was relieved.

"So you've got about five months left." Helga pushed the empty plate away from herself. She sounded tired, weary. As if she was already done with all of this, because she saw how it ended in advance, and was merely going through the sad motions for their benefit.

"Why don't we start with a brief summary of how your meeting with Arnold went," Phoebe began. "That way, we have a baseline of where to begin."

Helga didn't seem impressed or hurried to get to her story.

"Nah, I don't think so, Phoebe."

Gerald and Phoebe looked at each other, puzzled. Brainy pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose.

"Look, Arnold's got a life now. He seems happy. He has his mom and dad and an entire _continent_ all to himself. We can't just _decide_ to keep him."

Gerald scowled. "Now wait just a damn minute, Pataki, you said you were in earlier. What gives?"

"Look," Helga sighed, clearly wearied. "I _want_ him to stay. Of course I do. Arnold's like the freaking glue that kept Hillwood from flying apart. You were all here when he left. You know how everybody just _tore_ into each other. I've never heard of a more vicious pack of sixth graders, like little _hyenas_ with the scent of blood."

Phoebe remembered. It was bad. Without Arnold, the ever-positive, always helpful, only-sees-the-best-in-people _hero_ around, things got exceptionally malicious. Rhonda basically went out of control with her cruel gossip, Curly _totally_ lost touch with reality and moved away, and without Arnold around to keep them humble, the bullies of PS118 grew to be legitimately nasty. The examples just continued: Harold was a full blown street-dwelling crustpunk; Sid dropped out of high school to run a pawn shop; Nadine just left to live on a farm; Eugene gave up on acting and drama and worked in a cheesy, sketchy magic shop. The list went on. Their teenage years could have been significantly more peaceful and typical had Arnold been around. Yet, not a single person that knew him would begrudge his decision to stay with his parents. Least of all Helga, Phoebe knew, though she was the one most heartbroken.

"And you know what?" Helga's voice dropped into that seldom-heard level of sincerity, the rarest of jewels from a Pataki. "If he stayed, I can't tell you if there would be a single happier person on the planet than Helga Geraldine Pataki." Her voice returned to its typical level of acidic sarcasm. "But I'm not going to_ manipulate_ him like this was a game. That's not how Helga plays ball. I step up to the plate and swing like hell; if I miss, I miss."

Phoebe had to respect the Helga sitting in front of her. Nine year old Helga would have no difficulty using all manner of subterfuge and obfuscation to manipulate Arnold into staying here. But this Helga was simply different. Principled. And she would not deviate from her principles, now that she was able to find them. Clearly, a softer touch would be necessary to convince her. Phoebe was puzzling over the best approach when Gerald interrupted her woolgathering with a typical Johanssen frank and straight-to-the-point question aimed at Helga.

"Just what _is_ my man Arnold to you, anyway, Pataki?"

Phoebe held her breath. Gerald didn't know it, but that was a dangerous question in itself. Helga was what they called in Japan a _tsundere_; cold and hostile to the object of their affections before they were able to warm up and become sincere in their feelings. when challenged, a textbook _tsundere_ like Helga was extremely likely to default to the dishonest, cold aloofness and hostility as a self-defense mechanism. She watched Helga's cheeks redden, and her tall, beautiful friend become visibly flustered at the question. Phoebe braced herself for a string of sailor-withering obscenities.

She was stupefied when Helga responded in quiet, reverent sincerity: "I'm in love with him, probably." Brainy looked away, his face red.

Phoebe _couldn't_ believe that Helga has confessed, the act was so unthinkable it forced her to totally re-evaluate their tactical positioning in their plans. If Helga was owning up to her feelings, it could only be because she felt like she had nothing left to lose.

If she felt like she had nothing left to lose, it was likely because Helga had already given up all hope on Arnold. A significant problem.

Gerald nodded at her answer. "Yeah, I mean, I figured so. After the jungle thing, I just couldn't deny the evidence anymore. Well. If you love the guy, why not tell him?" Phoebe scolded herself for getting distracted; Gerald was heading down a path that had only a closed door at the end of it; she needed to help steer Helga away from anything that seemed_ final._

"Let's table that question for now, Gerald," Phoebe diplomatically interrupted. Helga gave her a thankful look, clearly not comfortable with the current topic. "Instead, let's tell Helga everything that we can at this stage," she began, eyeing Gerald with purposeful significance as she carefully chose her wording. "And bring her and Brainy up to speed, so that there's no confusion or misunderstandings or anyone _jumping to conclusions._" Phoebe prayed that Gerald caught the emphasis on the last bit.

Helga seemed satisfied with this. "I'll listen, but I can't promise I'll do anything other than what I've already agreed to. So don't get your hopes up."

Phoebe swallowed, hesitating to begin her explanation. Hope was all she had left at this point.

* * *

"Alright, so, what do we do about Lila?" Gerald ran his fingers along Phoebe's arm idly, thrilling her flesh at the simple contact. She lost herself for just a moment in the intimate gesture. It gave her butterflies, even as they lay nearly skin-to-skin like they were.

She brought herself to address his question, though she was loathe to focus on anything other than his large hands.

"Lila Sawyer is a problem," Phoebe agreed. She had to sit up, off of Gerald, in order to focus. They had been talking and planning and _enjoying_ each other's company for the majority of the day and well into the late night. Now three teapots in, both of them were quite tired, but had worked through almost all the possible scenarios and come to agree on almost all necessary courses of action. Where they didn't agree, Phoebe made a mental note to simply out-maneuver Gerald. Lila was one of those areas she anticipated needing to out-maneuver him.

"That's an _understatement_, Pheebs. Sawyer is _the_ problem."

Phoebe bit her thumb, nodding in agreement. For all their careful planning and excellent strategies, if they didn't neutralize or otherwise segregate Lila from the equation, there were going to be _complications._

"Obviously, she cannot come to the beach house," Phoebe started with the most basic, understood information. "I am unsure if her presence at the party would be deleterious to our desired effect or not; it would certainly create significant friction between Arnold and Helga. Perhaps enough to jeopardize the whole plan."

"I just can't see convincing Arnold that she can't come. Even if she hasn't lived in Hillwood in years."

Phoebe nodded. Most of the class of PS118 that moved outside of the city limits was not coming. There were exceptions; Curly was making a _point_ to peel away from his brokerage firm in New York to flaunt his newfound wealth, for example. But Lila had moved back to the country home she originally left when they graduated middle school. She simply hadn't been a part of their circle of friends for very long, so Gerald hadn't used his considerable influence to keep his dossier on her up-to-date. Now, Phoebe wished she had stressed to Gerald to keep it up, just in case. They were deeply regretting that he had not, because they knew virtually nothing of her coming and going, her life after Hillwood. And how this happened with Arnold.

"It will be difficult. I think it is important to delay reintroducing Lila to the equation as much as possible. We know we have a limited amount of time, but we don't have an exact date. It's possible that Lila will elect to stay in her hometown until we get much closer to our deadline."

Even as she said it, Phoebe knew it was wishful thinking.

"I don't know, we're being awfully careful with everything else to get sloppy here, babe."

"Obviously, if our goal is to disrupt Arnold's decision and convince him to stay in Hillwood rather than return to South America," Phoebe began slowly, working out the solution as she spoke it. "Anything that segregates Lila from Hillwood and Arnold is worth exploring. I propose that we contact her directly.."

Gerald sat up on his bed, surprise obvious on his bearded face.

"_Contact her?_ Aren't we trying to _avoid_ her? What good is there in dropping her a line?"

Phoebe put her hand on Gerald's knee to calm him.

"Lila Sawyer, despite all the trouble she is causing, is perhaps the precise individual that we can fully disclose the entirety of our plan to without fear of any disruption or interference." Phoebe remembered Helga's story about her confession to Lila before the Romeo and Juliet performance. Lila had been happy to step aside that time. Phoebe was confident that tendency wasn't a fluke or whim.

Gerald blinked in the darkness, looking very tired. "Huh? Now you've really lost me, Pheebs. How in the world is telling _Lila Sawyer_ our plan for Arnold _anything_ but disruptive?"

"Her positive, helpful nature," Phoebe began slowly, "affords us the luxury of brutal, punishing honesty. With Arnold, we need to move him around carefully to expose him bit-by-bit to the different stages of the plan. With Helga, we have to strictly segregate wholecloth entire phases until the critical moment. With Lila Sawyer, however," she turned to face Gerald squarely. "We can count on her being not only willing to allow us our attempt, but will possibly wish to _assist _us."

"How do you figure?" Gerald watched Phoebe, hope and confusion clear on his face.

"She will want Arnold to make his decision with perfect clarity. If we announce our intentions, the odds of her telling Arnold are very high, but the odds are just as good that she will elect to encourage the events to play out. I feel like her sense of honor and destiny are weaknesses we can exploit."

Gerald scrutinized Phoebe. She felt slightly embarrassed by the attention. She always wondered what information Gerald kept about her in his little black book. Her pages were especially difficult to decode; several attempts had not gleaned any information. But she imagined that his careful examination of her would inform a new entry: _exceptionally cunning._

"I don't know, Pheebs, it's bold, but maybe _too _bold. What if she just tells Arnold everything? He'll know the whole plan and then the jig is up."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Gerald. We are being extremely careful in all the other factors. We can afford _one_ reckless move, as a probe. I feel we have little choice; we either proactively attack and force a move, or we wait for the executioner's axe to fall at some unknown time."

"You're crazy." Gerald was grinning.

"No, Gerald, I just play a lot of Go." Phoebe giggled at his puzzled expression. Go was one of the ways she and her father had bonded during her teenage years. It helped her connect to her Japanese roots, and helped teach her many lessons in life. She had become quite strong at the game, but had little time to indulge in the hobby once she started University.

She was especially thankful she had the background in the world's oldest, most complex board game as she worked on this plan with Gerald.

"Okay...I think this is crazy, but I'll bite. When do we tell Lila?"

"As soon as possible. The sooner we have her explicit buy-in, the sooner we can begin preparing for the rest."

"I think I'm free next weekend. I can find out where she's shacked up. We can make a trip of it."

Phoebe liked that idea very much. However, the thought of another weekend, intimately alone with Gerald, executing their exciting subterfuge together, and in all probability spending multiple evenings together _bothered_ her somehow. Phoebe stood up from Gerald's bed. It was important they address the evening's _encounters_ and what they meant before they planned for some quasi-romantic interlude out of state together.

"Gerald...what do you feel about _this_?" Phoebe was usually exceptionally articulate. When she was attempting to communicate her feelings, however, she found herself less than eloquent.

Gerald needed more information. "Huh? I feel alright, I said I would go along with the idea. I think it's too risky, but," Phoebe held a hand up, stopping him.

"No, Gerald, about _us._" Gerald looked at her, his mouth shutting without further comment. His face grew troubled. It had been _Phoebe_ that suggested they separate post graduation. Gerald was less than excited about the idea, to say the least, but had been finally willing to concede that they were better off as friends than ex-lovers.

Phoebe wrung her hands together at her waist. She was suddenly very worried that Gerald thought she was_ easy_ or _slutty._ They weren't officially in a relationship and she had allowed-no, initiated-a physical encounter. Did he see her as an easily accessible source of physical _relief_? Had she set a precedent, in his mind, that she was available for casual encounters?

Gerald stood up from his bed, moving across his room to walk past the very anxious, very worried Phoebe Heyerdahl.

He leaned against the closed door, crossing his arms over his chest. She didn't turn to look at him, but he began to talk just the same.

"Phoebe, you are gonna have to physically _move_ me out of the way before I let you out of here, still single and not my girl."

Phoebe whipped around, looking at Gerald with surprise and scrutiny.

"So just try it, shrimp." He flashed her his characteristic grin, and Phoebe fell onto him with enthusiasm.

_This, at least, makes sense._ Phoebe sighed as Gerald embraced her, lifting her off the floor.

* * *

"So that's why you're having me play this party?" Helga sounded legitimately surprised.

"Basically," Gerald's air of casual self-confidence impressed Phoebe. They had just explained every nuance of the party to Helga. They hadn't begun to explain phase two or phase three. So far, Helga seemed to be on board. She had plenty of questions, of course, but had kept her probing friendly, even.

"Alright...I'm still in. I'll go to this party, and Orphan will even play it. Hell, Briany can DJ, we'll bring the karaoke machine, whole nine yards. I'll even _dress up_ all sexy and blow little Arnoldo's football shaped head right off." Phoebe grinned as Helga continued to offer her support.

"On _two_ conditions." Helga put a finger on the table, tapping the surface for emphasis. "Gerald's playing bass, and I want ten minutes _guaranteed_ alone with Arnold. Non-negotiable, no interruptions. His little note pissed me off; if football head wants to say goodbye, I'll give him a send off he'll _never_ forget, on my own terms."

Gerald's eyes were wide. "Me? Playing bass?"

Brainy's eyes were wide as well. "Uh...ten minutes?"

Phoebe's smile was wide. "Done, and done."

"Waitaminute, Pheebs, I didn't agree to play with them," Gerald began to protest.

"Uh...ten minutes?" Brainy continued to voice his concern.

Phoebe reached across the table, her hand extended for Helga to shake. The two boys watched helplessly as Helga confidently, firmly took Phoebe's hand, and shook it hard to seal their bargain.

Phoebe relaxed internally. The pieces were in place. All they had to do now was play the first move.


	4. Chapter 4 - Most Love Comes Second Hand

A/N: A Gerald chapter, side order of Lila, Helga, and Arnold. One step closer to Arnold's secret. Some of the more astute of you may figure it out early! Thanks for sticking with me this long, there's so much more to come. Next one is all Helga! R/R craved, needed, obsessed over.

Keeping Arnold: Chapter 4, Most Love Comes Second Hand

"If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion." - Noam Chomsky

* * *

"Try to keep up, Geraldo, we ain't got all day to wait for you to catch up," Helga snarled at Gerald. Gerald was non-plussed, as a calloused habit of abuse from Pataki dulled him ages ago to anything but her sharpest weapons. He straightened the bass in his grasp, shaking his head and lifting his shoulders once.

"Look, I haven't played since freshman year," Gerald tried to defeat Helga's nastiness with reason. It sometimes worked. "And then it was for my cousin's hip hop project. You gotta cut me some slack, I'm not used to girl rock."

Gerald was in Helga's apartment with Brainy and Stoop Kid, practicing with Orphan for the party coming in just two days. A lot was left to prepare at his frat house, but the urgency of learning a set of twelve songs was pressure enough to keep him in Helga's company for pretty much every available moment he had.

"Shit in seven stacks, where'd this kid learn to play?" Stoop Kid irritably rolled the kick drum pedals, rumbling the floor with his impatience. The former bully was not exactly who Gerald envisioned playing up on the stage when he suggested Orphan play, but Helga insisted that Stoop Kid was the only one who could manage on such short notice. And Gerald had to admit, Stoop could play drums. So far, he had no trouble at all following Helga's instructions to the letter, even finding ways to creatively improvise and flourish in ways that Pataki praised.

Gerald was a lot rustier. He had a valid reason, though. He didn't have a lot of time to practice bass guitar between baseball, partying, frat duties, classes, and planning a mastermind plot with his ex-now-girlfriend to get his best friend to dump Lila Sawyer and move back home. He was swamped.

"Let's just start from the top. I want to run through 'Tibetan Pop Star' again." Helga shifted her stance back to the mic they had set up in her living room. Gerald had to admit that they had really done a bangup job setting up a practice studio in their tiny apartment in fairly little notice. He and Brainy had spent a fairly awkward, silent afternoon stapling sound proofing foam to their walls, hanging heavy blankets over windows and doors, and running cables and cords from amps and pedal systems to the handful of outlets in the two bedroom flat. They'd only gotten a single noise complaint in two days, and that was because they had forgotten to close one of the bedroom windows and seal it up. They'd been able to get in some really solid practice, and Gerald, always confident, had no doubt he'd be able to perform to Helga's standards on stage.

She still made him nervous.

The song began, Helga's voice following the leading melody she plucked out, and Gerald waited for the right bar to join in, concentrating, but his mind still found ways to occupy itself with other urgent issues.

_I can't believe Lila went to South America after she graduated._ Gerald hit the exact note he needed to on time, and saw Helga's glance of approval as they continued through the song. It was true, he was shocked to learn that Lila had left her hometown after graduation and went to Arnold. It was almost out of character for her, and certainly one of the last things he'd ever expect to hear that she'd been up to.

What really surprised him, though, was that Arnold had kept her a secret for the better part of a year and a half. Arnold was mum on why. In fact, Arnold was uncharacteristically silent on the issue altogether, besides his rather sudden and dramatic _announcement._

Gerald fell through the song's dramatic finale without any errors, finally having the hang of the jaunty bassline that followed the power-chord climax. When the song was over, he took a breath, reaching for a handkerchief to wipe his sweat-soaked forehead.

"Yo, what do you say we stop for a lunchbreak. I'm beat." Gerald needed a break. He needed to call Phoebe, first of all, and he needed to talk to Arnold. He hadn't seen his best friend since the first day he came to town, and he knew Arnold was busy catching up with Phil and Gertie, but he was still his oldest friend he hadn't seen in person in almost ten years. Even though time had managed to get in the way of how close they really were, he still imagined himself Arnold's life-long childhood bosom buddy, and wasn't about to let too much time pass without at least hanging out with him for old time's sake.

"Yeah, I could eat," Helga agreed. "Hey, Froboy, you're doing an alright job, for a total slacker. Against my better judgement, I'd say you just might managed to not embarrass me to death."

"Gee, thanks, Helga. You're ever too kind to little old me," Gerald gave his bitter reply. He had to admit to himself, even though Helga was bullish and unpleasant and never let an opportunity to humiliate or harass him go, she had her moments. He still couldn't see what Arnold saw in her ten years ago.

_Or what he sees in her now._ Gerald had to remind himself, Arnold had been extremely insistent the day he returned to Hillwood that he see Helga first. _Maybe he just needed closure_, Gerald reasoned as he drank from a bottle of tepid water Helga handed him. Brainy and Stoop Kid stepped out onto the balcony to hand roll some cigarettes, the unpleasant busker immediately opening his mouth to start talking trash about the party. Gerald never really liked Stoop Kid. He thought he was too mean, too cowardly, and too old to be worth his time. Arnold saw something in him Gerald didn't; a running theme in their friendship.

Gerald had decided the first day Arnold returned to find out what it was he saw in Helga, though. He needed to understand what made that attraction possible, if they were going to overcome the mountain that was Lila.

"Say, Pataki," Gerald began tentatively. He knew you had to be careful with her. She was older, and far less prone to actual physical violence than when they were elementary kids, but if you pushed Pataki too far she would let you know immediately, and in the least pleasant way you could imagine. "Can I ask you a kind of personal question?" Time to be bold.

"What is it Froboy?" she shot back with impatience. Helga was writing something down busily in a pink spiral notebook, barely paying attention to Gerald. He took it as permission to proceed.

"How come you never, I dunno, _moved on_ in ten years? Didn't you like, date some dudes in high school? Sow your wild oats and whatnot? How do you even _remember_ all that happened when we were in fourth grade?"

Helga stopped writing, looking up at Gerald with a scowl on her face. "Criminy, what _is_ it with everybody and this stupid gradeschool _crush_ I had ten years ago?" She huffed, visibly bothered. He saw that she wanted to be nasty by the twitch in her thick black eyebrows. Instead, she closed her eyes and sighed a deep, shaking sigh. She was calming herself down. Maybe she _had_ matured.

"How exactly was I supposed to move on when the obsessive little shrimp wrote me letters constantly for six years?" She set her pencil down and leaned on her knees. Gerald was a little surprised, she was opening her body language to him. _Him._ He and Helga had never gotten on well. At best, they had a begrudging respect for one another, a silent agreement to stop fighting around Arnold when he was still around. Once he left, the gloves came off in middle school, and a few vicious altercations later and they basically never talked at all in high school.

Gerald remained silent, his stoic and curious expression the bait he hoped he needed to goad her in further.

"I mean, yeah I dated a couple of nobodies not worth mentioning. Had some laughs, even had a good cry or two. Hell, Brainy took me to prom." She smiled a little at the memory and looked out at the balcony to Brainy, who was pretending to listen to Stoop Kid's rant about yuppies while he watched Helga. Gerald noticed the pink in her cheeks. _Interesting. Brainy and her have something going on deeper than we've considered. _Gerald would need to tell Phoebe as soon as he left for lunch.

"But, I've cared about that stupid kid since we were _three_ years old. It's not even something I have a choice in, really, it's a character trait by now. He's in my marrow." She paused, hesitating. He watched her features change, soften and then harden again, as she decided to open up to him. Gerald held his breath.

"It's like, he's out there, somewhere, and I will always think fondly of him and wish him well and _fight like hell_ to make sure he's got it good wherever he is, if I can. But, I mean, it's all in the distant past now," she shrugged, looking back up at Gerald with her eyebrows high. "That's the only reason I'm okay with talking to you about it, by the way. I know you won't do something extremely foolish like make fun of me anymore, 'cause we're not kids, and 'cause you know better. Besides, there's no point in keeping a story with an ending a secret. Arnold's all grown up. And he grew up far away from me and you and everybody else. He's not ours anymore; he's not mine,_ he never was_. So yeah, I care about him, in the same way I care about softball and music and poetry. Doesn't mean anything will come of it, or that it should."

"You could chase after him," Gerald suggested, wondering how much she knew about Lila. Gerald wagered she didn't know anything. He was about to find out.

"Yeah, that might have been an option in a fairy tale, Johanssen." Her expression soured. She didn't know about Lila. "Don't make me regret telling you even one iota of my feelings, or you'll regret making me regret."

"Nah, I'm serious, Pataki. I'm not making fun, if you feel anything special for the boy, you should chase him." Gerald felt like he had a duty to give her the advice Arnold never could. He tried to tell her exactly what Arnold would. He felt he owed it to Arnold to try. "You were kids when you put your heart on the line, but you're not kids anymore. Maybe he has old or new romantic feelings for you, maybe not. It could happen. But you get nothing by just 'wishing him well' and 'remembering him,' in fact I think that's kind of selfish."

Helga's face screwed into a pissed-off scowl, the mask she wore when something hit too close to home. Gerald had seen it plenty of times as kids, he had just lacked the emotional toolkit to interpret her behavior back then. Not now, though. Gerald was, with perhaps the sole exception of Rhonda Wellington Lloyd, the _best_ at unraveling social motivations in Hillwood. Years of gathering information in his little black book with the help of Fuzzy Slippers had given him remarkable insight. He knew Phoebe saw some of it when they worked on this plan together, but it had been hard for him not to tell Phoebe everything he knew.

Gerald was the coolest guy in Hillwood; he always played with a stacked deck and still made you think he'd fold every hand.

"Fuck off, Gerald." Helga stood up angrily, and Gerald watched her silently chew his advice and digest it. He knew he'd given her grade-A, unmistakably Arnold material. He knew what it would do to her. "And even if I did chase after him, don't you think it's a little foolish for a grown woman to get all over-the-moon loopy over someone she had a tiny crush on in _fourth grade_? I've grown, I've changed. I'm not the shrimpy bully from PS118 anymore."

Gerald thought she was remarkably similar to the bully from PS118 now, maybe so close to the mark it embarrassed Helga.

"You've been just as mean, nasty, and downright shitty to be around since you were three, Helga G. Pataki. Fuck you too if you don't wanna recognize that shit as the honest truth."

Helga smirked, her hand resting on her hip. He saw a look in her eyes, a spark of a challenge that crossed between them.

"Oh I'm just as tough as I used to be, tougher even. But the little girl you knew is gone; she died a long time ago. In a jungle. Alone."

Gerald remembered what happened to Helga immediately after Arnold left. Most of the kids in PS118 remembered. It was one of the reasons most of their group of friends scattered; watching a human being spiral into such a magnificent blossom of catastrophic self-destruction was really hard to do. Especially for ten year olds.

"You know this is the longest we've ever talked, Pataki? And even though it sickens me to admit, I see what Arnold meant all those times." Gerald gambled. He needed her to open up further. So far, he'd managed to get her to be especially frank with him. He was suspicious of it; it seemed too simple for her. Helga was a sealed vault buried under a continental plate at the bottom of the deepest ocean. Inaccessible. He knew for a _fact_ nobody on the planet had heard some of the stuff she'd been telling him, except maybe Phoebe. _Maybe Brainy, too,_ he corrected himself, remembering the discovery of their unique relationship.

"What the fuck do you mean, Froboy?" She seemed genuinely interested, a tiny mote of hope carried in her scratchy voice now raw from singing.

"Man, I _hated_ you for the longest time. You were such a monster to everybody, especially my best friend, I couldn't see a single _damn_ thing in you that was worthwhile." He shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. "And you know who, every damn time, would patiently correct me? Guide me gently, convince me somehow, _every time_ that you weren't so bad, deep down?"

Helga's already large, expressive eyes were held large and fearful on her face. He knew he had her; she knew in her heart what he was about to say, but was anxious to hear it.

"Arnold Shortman. Every time. 'She's not so bad deep down, Gerald.' 'Helga is a good person when she's calmed down.' 'I know she doesn't mean it.'" Gerald scoffed, genuinely feeling the disbelief he was affecting. "_Saint._ I don't know why or how he had the patience. Maybe he's the reincarnated Buddha, fuck, the guy is practically the living embodiment of Zen. But every time you fucked with our lives and pushed him down or coated him tip to toe in spitwads, he'd sigh real big, brush it off, and tell me to back off when I felt like clocking you one."

Gerald walked to the door, intent on leaving her with something big enough to chew on, something to get her where they wanted her for the party. He needed Arnold and Helga to at _least_ confuse each other enough to put the brakes on this whole thing. This much was necessary.

"After he left, years later, I was telling him about some shitty stunt you pulled our freshman year, I don't even remember what it was," Gerald lied. He remembered. It was written down. "And he started defending you like he always did. Guy's not seen you in five years, and he's still rushing to your defence against me, his best friend. So I ask him why."

Gerald put his hand on the door knob, fishing for his keys while he felt Helga's eyes riveted on him. He had her; time to chum the water for his shark.

"Arnold pauses," Gerald turned his head to look at Helga as he opened the door. "Then he says, 'Because we're orphans, Gerald. Together.'"

Gerald held eye contact with Helga. He saw the effect of the story in her big watery blue eyes. Maybe it was too much. Anything more would spoil the effort, he knew, so he shook his head and left the apartment, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.

* * *

Mid-stride in a light jog, Gerald listened to the dial tone impatiently. Phoebe picked up right away.

"Gerald." She always answered his calls that way. He thought it was strange, but endearing.

"Pheebs, I'm doing it. I'm doing it!" Gerald could barely contain the excitement in his voice.

"I'm similarly excited to hear of your accomplishment, but if you enlighten me with specifics I will be able to share your jubilance."

"Helga, babe. I'm getting somewhere with her. I think this is going to work, I think we can get her to open up." Gerald turned a corner, his feet automatically taking him where his heart wanted him to go. Arnold was close. His pace picked up.

"That _is_ exciting news, then. What method has produced results?" Phoebe sounded like she was busy doing something as well. The both of them were always busy these days; they had a lot to prepare for.

"Just talkin' about Arnold. And liberally peppering in tidbits about my private one-on-ones with the man over the years. She's so thirsty for details she practically let me get away with murder."

Phoebe clucked her tongue. He knew she didn't like that they were manipulating Helga like this. Their friendship was as close as his and Arnold's; closer even, as distance had only recently separated them. But if Gerald didn't push, the party would fall flat. Everything had to be precisely right.

"Well, I'm not too fond of some of your chosen tactics, but I cannot argue with results. Keep me updated; where are you now?"

"Running to Arnold's real fast. I got a break from practice, so I'm not gonna waste it." Gerald's pace slowed down as he turned the corner and came to street the boarding house was on. No use in winding himself with the finish line in sight.

"Good; I've actually been quite concerned that our over-focus on this plan has detracted from our ability to enjoy his return. The odds of our success are tenuous, as you know. I've been thinking, and I think you should try to genuinely enjoy spending time with Arnold as much as possible. The plan is important, but, your friendship is far more important."

Gerald was touched. He always did love that sweet, sensitive side of Phoebe. Over the years in their friendship and relationships she had always surprised him with the level of sincerity and compassion she was capable of. He actually stopped walking, feeling compelled to tell her so.

"Hey, Pheebs," he looked up at the skyline of the buildings, fondly remembering all the times they ran around on the roofs as kids.

"Hm? Yes, Gerald?"

"I'm really glad we got back together. I really like you." He felt self-aware of his own body, his free hand not occupied by the phone fishing in his pocket nervously. She didn't respond right away, but he heard her sigh.

"I'm especially pleased as well, Gerald. I'll visit tonight. We can finish this conversation later." Her voice held the promise of something he knew he would enjoy.

"See you then, babe. I'm at Arnold's." Gerald put the phone in his pocket, stepping up the short stairs of the boarding house. He hadn't been in the building in years. He hadn't seen Phil and Gertie since his graduation. He recalled with fondness how they had shown up, Phil in his brown suit half moth-eaten and patched up, Gertie in the profound robes of a judge with a powdered wig. He smiled at the memory. Arnold's family had always been dear to him, but things had more significance when Arnold was back around. Taking a breath to steady himself, he lifted a hand to knock on the door.

* * *

Gerald sat awkwardly at the kitchen table, watching Phoebe assist Lila in making the three of them a pot of tea. Watching Lila move around the kitchen in her wheelchair was still jarring to Gerald, a shock of sad tragedy and an anxious wall of hopelessness he hadn't been remotely prepared for.

Lila, for her part, was her typical cheerful self about the situation. She had agreed to meet with them with excitement, and encouraged them to make the trip out to her family farm as soon as they were able.

"I am just ever so sure that we three have a lot to talk about," she had cryptically hinted. Gerald was sure she was talking about Arnold in a cunning, roundabout way. It turned out that she was, although only tangentially.

Phoebe and Gerald made the drive to her farm a week after their initial strategizing session. Now officially a couple, the drive had been really fun. They listened to Kanye and gossiped and talked about Helga, but mostly they made up for lost time together. The drive was sweet, a pleasant memory he could go back to now when he was so uncomfortable.

He felt terribly guilty. He felt like he should have known this, he should have kept tabs on her, should have pressed Arnold for more information. He was supposed to know _everything _about everybody; not knowing that Lila Sawyer was now in a wheelchair, partially paralyzed in her legs, and _selling_ the farm to go live with Arnold was a lapse in his responsibilities. A warm, sick feeling sat in his guts, and made it difficult for him to keep up pleasantries. He had said little. Phoebe noticed, making up for his silence with an over abundance of chatter. He wasn't sure which made Lila feel more awkward, but he could tell they were making her feel uncomfortable.

Lila rolled herself to the table with Gerald, sighing gently.

"I suppose you are just besides yourselves with curiosity. It's okay; you can ask." She seemed so _patient._

Gerald looked at Phoebe. She seemed like she understood the pleading look he tried to give her, and spoke for them both.

"Gerald and I came to visit because we heard from Arnold what the two of you were planning," she diplomatically began. "We are a little surprised at your condition, Arnold made no mention of any injuries you had sustained."

"Ah, no, I don't suppose he would be any manner of eager to talk about it." Lila's smile was slightly sad. Gerald felt ill to see it. They would have to totally abandon their plan, he felt. He couldn't get in the way of _this._

"Do you mind helping Gerald and I understand what happened?" Phoebe continued to be diplomatic.

"Not at all," Lila smiled sweetly, setting her teacup down daintily. Gerald could hardly believe she was the same plain girl he knew in grade and middle school. A lot had changed; beyond her injury, Lila Sawyer had grown up to be a rather voluptuous woman. He was reminded of a less flashy, more down-to-earth Christina Hendricks; the girl had curves. She kept her doe-brown hair in a high bun, but had pretty, soft bangs swept over a forehead that he could tell was crossed with recent worries. She wore a green sundress, and Gerald could imagine no color more appropriate for her to wear. She was green in his mind, always, vibrant. Full of life's sweetness.

Part of him worried that he was romantisizing her injury. The rest of him couldn't deny what he was seeing: a beautiful young woman, that if he didn't know better he would call almost physically perfect.

"It was all rather silly," she began, looking down at the table in memory of things past. "When mama and papa passed in the flood suddenly, I was just terribly upset and alone. Arnold was ever so sweet and encouraging in his letters. When he proposed I visit, I was just ever so tickled and curious. Travel has always been just an oh so romantic dream of mine.

"He picked me up in Mexico City, looking rather dashing and tanned and seeming just especially worldly. I must admit Arnold has always been a special boy to me, but something different about him made him _especially _special then. It was easy to fall in love quickly with him, when he was so dashing and daring and sweet." Lila rest her cheek on her hand, looking into her teacup, fondly remembering.

Gerald could only imagine the shock of seeing Arnold as he was now after years of imagining a scrawny, shrimpy kid. Gerald had been floored to see him in photos, all tanned and strong and rugged looking. Lila must have been floored. _Helga will be shocked_, he thought. The plan returned to his thoughts, and he furrowed his brow as he listened to Lila tell her sad tale.

"We spent a few weeks in Bolivia, then Peru, and then he took me to San Lorenzo and I got to stay with him and Miles and Stella. His parents are ever so darling, but they were awfully prying into our affairs, Arnold's and mine. That's not to say that our _affair_ had started then, in fact that started much later. After, well, you know." Lila glanced down at her legs.

_We have to find out how far its gone._ Gerald was surprised to hear that nothing had happened until _after _the accident. Phoebe glanced at him, apparently thinking the same thing.

"One rainy dreary day Arnold was out gathering plants for Stella, and his guide comes running into camp, just terribly upset and concerned. Arnold had slipped and fallen somehow, and was out on a dangerous outcropping of rock, unconscious. Without thinking I ran after him with the guide, leaving most of my safety climbing gear behind."

Gerald saw where this was going. The guilt piled on.

"And," Lila sighed, gesturing to her legs. "I was able to get Arnold to safety, but, I couldn't manage to make the descent myself without this mess. It's ever so embarrassing; I feel positively a burden now."

Phoebe put her hand on Lila's. Gerald felt awkward watching the gesture. Lila smiled at the two of them, another slightly sad smile.

"Immediately after the accident, Miles and Stella and Arnold helped me get back home for immediate treatment. The doctors say I'm lucky, I've only lost partial use of my legs, and with physical therapy I might be right as rain again someday."

Gerald and Phoebe looked at each other. He was sure she was feeling the same level of guilt that he was; how could they have spent so much time planning ways to take Arnold away from Lila, when they knew nothing about this? He felt awkward and obvious in front of Lila, who still managed to seem graceful and dainty despite everything.

"Lila, we-" Gerald began, his voice sounding apologetic. Phoebe put a hand on his, and shook her head. He closed his mouth, and felt a swirl of confusion why she interrupted him. Phoebe turned to Lila, and started to speak slowly.

"Lila, we owe you an apology," she began, and Gerald watched Lila widen her eyes in surprise. "We made this trip only because we heard from Arnold an entirely different story, and our intention was to try to get between you." Gerald felt his jaw hang open. What was she doing? Was she still going ahead with the plan? He watched with shock as Lila processed her apology, looking at the two of them with an annoyed, puzzled expression on her face.

"You see, the curious, secretive nature of the manner that Arnold has chosen to disclose this news to us gave us great cause for concern. It is singularly out of character for him to remain mum on something so significant; in fact, it is my suspicion that a guilty conscience was the only thing that prompted him to tell us _at all._"

Lila blinked in surprise, folding her hands in her lap passively. "What does this mean, Phoebe?"

"It means, Gerald and I came here with the suspicion that his heart isn't in this. You can surely forgive us our suspicions, but it seems now that perhaps we were mistaken." Now Gerald had _no_ idea where Phoebe was going with this. He watched Lila process the half-apology, the shock of the candid confession clearly affecting her. She was blushing in splotches on her neck and cheeks, physically affected by this assuredly hurtful news. Gerald wanted to get out of there fast.

Gerald jumped in his chair when Lila looked up at him with watery eyes and spoke in a calm, but quivering voice. "How did you intend to go about getting between us?"

"Wha? W-what do you mean?" Gerald felt himself stammer in a blank panic.

"Well, did you two have some sort of plan?" He thought he saw something in her eyes, something other than hurt. He peered at her, but Phoebe answered for him.

"We have a complex, multi-stage plan, designed to bring Arnold back to Hillwood permanently." Gerald whipped his head to look at Phoebe in shock again. He felt like he was merely a spectator in some horrible play, a Greek tragedy where everyone in the room would end up murdered dramatically. "It involves Helga," she added.

"Helga Pataki," Lila said, shaking her head and looking out the window of her quiet, quaint little farmhouse. "The woman of letters." Gerald heard more years of confusion, bitterness, and rivalry in those four words than he felt he would ever hear again.

Gerald wondered how much Lila knew about the letters, or what Arnold had told her. She knew more than nothing, which was enough to make him unsteady.

"Arnold spoke of her often, until the accident. In fact, Arnold hasn't been much of his oh so very charming self since then. I think he feels terribly guilty; it's why I don't think you're wrong." Lila looked back at the two of them with a sad smile. "I don't think his heart is in it either. It's difficult for me to accept that, but I can't very well ignore the obvious much longer. Afterall, I was the one that put the idea in his head."

"What do you mean?" Gerald had yet to hear the story for himself.

Lila sighed, flattening out the wrinkles in her skirt. "Arnold asked me not long after the accident how he could ever repay me. For saving him. And I was feeling just ever so frightened and lonely and homesick, that I asked him to always stay by my side. He took the request oh so seriously, and quite literally."

Phoebe nodded, sipping her tea. Gerald had no idea how she could drink so calmly as bombshell after bombshell kept dropping. "If you suspect that Arnold's heart isn't in it, why accept?"

Lila smiled bright and large, shrugging her shoulders. "Because I'm in love with him. It's what I want, very much so."

Gerald felt like that was an oddly selfish response from Sawyer. "Even if his heart's not in it?"

Lila shook her head, "No, not if his heart's not in it. That's why I think you should go on with your plan." Gerald felt his stomach drop. How _awful._ He was going to try to tear a crippled girl's life-long love from her, at her insistence. It felt monstrous, an unthinkable sin against a friend. How could she ask this of him and Phoebe? Even if it was what they came here to do, he still wondered if he had the grit to do it.

"Lila, no offense, but don't you think it's a bit cruel to you? I mean, we'll be trying our hardest to take Arnold away from you. Forever." He had to be honest with her. He wouldn't be able to look at himself in the mirror later if he was anything less.

"It's awful, terrible, and extremely nasty of_ me_ to ask you to do this, Gerald." Lila scrunched her nose up, not bothering to hide her bitterness. Gerald felt it was a special violence she committed to turn this awful thing against herself, to command their guilt away and lash Arnold's albatross to her own neck. "But, if you do everything you can and he still comes home to me and we start our new lives in San Lorenzo, I'll be able to do it with a clear conscience. It will mean despite all that happened in his past, I am his future. I can't imagine anything ever so much more perfect than that. It would be a gift. So, I'm terribly sorry to have to make you do this, I am ever so awfully sorry. Consider it a selfish request from an old friend."

Phoebe sighed, and Gerald felt himself lump up a wad of emotion in his throat.

"I know what it seems like," she continued, "but I truly believe that I'm not _always_ going to be like this. Arnold isn't convinced, and he just looks at me so _sadly_. It's ever so awful, and I simply can't bear it. If you're brave enough to challenge his heart on my account because I'm too much of a silly lovesick little girl to do it myself, I'll lean on you for help." Lila tried to smile at them, but a tear forced itself out of her eyes, and was quickly followed by more.

Phoebe held her hand, squeezing it hard. The three old friends sad there like that for some time, listening to the patient clicking of Lila's wall clock and the gentle outpouring of misplaced remorse. Finally, Phoebe cracked the shell of silence. "Then we'll do everything in our power for you. And for him. The odds are good you won't have him anymore. I suggest that you make the most of the time you have between now and his planned visit."

Lila nodded, wiping her cheeks with her fingers. "Ahaha, don't worry, I will. I have ever so many romantic plans for my Arnold. He won't forget this month." She smiled through her sadness at them, and Gerald had no idea how to feel.

"Good luck, you two. I hope he loves me enough that your plans go up in smoke. But don't you slouch on me."

Gerald clenched his jaw, nodding. "Don't worry, Lila. We won't. Arnold won't know what hit him."

Phoebe grabbed his hand for purchase under the table, and he squeezed it as hard as he possibly could. Their agreement was clear. It was their solemn duty to keep Arnold.

* * *

Gerald was wheezing in the bone-crushing hug, laughing between gasps for air as his surprisingly strong best friend tried to shake the life out of him in a massive embrace.

"Aiight, aiight! I'm dyin'! Lemme down!" Gerald laughed, caught off guard by the surprising strength and vigor in Arnold.

"Oh, sorry Gerald!" Arnold set him down with a big grin on his broad features, clapping his hand in a squeezing handshake and slapping Gerald's opposite shoulder eagerly. "It's really great to see you! How long do you have?"

Gerald pulled Arnold's handshake into their secret version of the same, waggling his thumb opposite Arnold's in their often-practiced way.

"Maybe thirty, forty minutes. Gotta gig to return to - frat house stuff." Gerald had not told Arnold about Helga's band, or his participation. That wasn't in the plan.

"Time enough! I'll get Grandpa, he's been dying to see you." Arnold strode quickly into the kitchen, disappearing for a second.

Gerald had time to look around the boarding house, remembering the unique smell of those old walls, the creak of the floorboards, and the strange, almost year-round dense humidity of the first floor. He flexed his toes in his black converse, momentarily remembering grasping the thick wool rug underfoot in the entryway with childish, bare feet. It was a good memory.

"Issat Gerald? Hooboy, lookit his arms!" Phil rounded the corner, walking with a cane but still shockingly spry for 91. Gerald smiled wide at his old friend, walking to shake his hand warmly.

"Grandpa Phil, it's wonderful to see you. Eat any raspberries lately?"

"Oh you know me, a Shortman can never stay away from the darn things. How's your cute little Asian friend with the glasses?"

"Phoebe is well, Phil. She's off at university now, but we just got back together."

"Ah, young love! It's a beautiful thing, just be careful or you'll end up a papa! It's what I've been telling Shortman here about his cutey in the chair with the big bazookas!"

"Lila, Grandpa." Arnold corrected his grandfather with a wince, an embarrassed smudge of shiny red on his very tan features. Gerald had to admit, Arnold looked like a sun god these days. Years of mostly physical labor out in the sun drenched equatorial jungles had given him a permanent bronzing to his skin, but in a way that lifted the impression of health and vigor to the surface. His easy green irises were ringed by eyes that had managed to grow little crows feet. His hair, longer than before, was roughly tousled and sun-kissed, crashing waves of almost silvery blonde highlighting within his normally golden straw locks. A thick, even field of fine, shining golden facial hair spread under his nose around his jaw, giving him a rugged and adult look. Gerald had done a double take the first time he saw his friend again, the transformation was that impressive.

Phil nodded, waving his free hand to shoo away the annoying business of remembering names. "Well, I'll let you two catch up. Pookie's got to have her afternoon herbal remedies." Arnold helped turn Phil around, and Gerald watched the wizened old man positively zoom off to go spend time with his wife. He hoped he was half as much in love with Phoebe as Phil was with Gertie.

Arnold was watching him too, though he had a much different look on his face. Concern.

"Grandpa's not getting around as well these days," he sighed. "I don't know what is going to happen if he falls again."

Gerald smiled at his friend supportively, clapping his shoulder. "I'm sure Phil's gonna outlive us all, Arnold. Let's hit your room."

Arnold nodded, leading them up the stairs. "You and Pheebs back together huh? That's great!"

"Yeah. It just happened. Bout a month ago. We're gonna make it work, distance or not." Gerald swung into Arnold's desk chair when they arrived in his room, Arnold closing the door behind them for privacy.

"I'm happy for you. I know it'll work out, some things are just meant to be."

Gerald saw an ugly opportunity. He remembered what Phoebe said, but couldn't ignore the chance to add power to the payload of their plan.

"Just like some things aren't quite meant to be, huh?"

Arnold smiled bitterly, nodding. He crossed the small room in three strong strides, flopping his body onto his small old bed with a defeated sigh and the protesting strains of a tiny spring mattress. "I really thought something would happen when I saw Helga again."

"You can't beat yourself up man. And it's better nothing _did_ happen, right? Ain't you spoken for, and thoroughly now?" Gerald knew he had to tread carefully. Arnold was smart, and wise to Gerald's tricks. Most of them.

"It's complicated, Gerald, you know that. And besides, Helga just seemed _off_ somehow. I can't put my finger on it."

Gerald rolled his eyes. "Mm, mm, mm! My man Arnold Shortman has got _no_ idea the stupefying effect his Marlboro man looks have on the ladies, does he?"

Arnold scrunched up his round nose at Gerald. "Marlboro man? Helga wasn't stupefied by my looks, Gerald."

"Then she's blinder than when she April fooled you. I'm telling you, seeing you for the first time is a _shocker_, man. Girl wasn't in her right mind, or I'm not the coolest guy in Hillwood."

It seemed to make Arnold think. _Come on man, don't be this easy, _Gerald inwardly pleaded. _Don't be this easy on me, after all our years. _Gerald genuinely felt like he wanted Arnold to challenge him. Anything less felt like it was somehow _ignoble._

"Maybe at first, though I _doubt_ it. No, Gerald, she meant what she said. 'The past is the past,' that's pretty definitive. It's all the answer I needed, I guess."

_Dangerous. Always lead him down the path to Helga by a leash, even when you point him away with your hands and eyes. _Gerald changed his tactics. "What if you got a different answer, though? What if Helga G. Pataki, queen _bitch_ of Hillwood, looked you in the eyes and said, 'Arnold Shortman, I am hopelessly in love with you and never want to be apart.' How could you _HANDLE _that kind of shock?! I'd croak dead on the spot." _Attack her, force him to defend._

"She's not a bitch, and don't ever use that word. It's a nasty word used only to hurt women." Arnold sounded serious. Gerald was surprised, but remained passively attentive. "Helga's just like me deep down, we just express ourselves in different ways. I _understand_ her, better than anyone. If she'd said all of that, then, I dunno. It would be different. But she didn't. So it's over, time to grow up and move on."

_Extreme danger! _"Move on to Lila, you mean. It must be nice, having that sweet thing on the side as a backup." _Careful, Gerald, careful!_

"Gerald, what's gotten into you?" Arnold seemed legitimately offended, standing up from the bed. "Why are you going after them like that?"

"I'm not man, I'm just saying what they are probably thinking. You told Helga about Lila, right?"

"No, not exactly. Not at all, actually," Arnold screwed his face up painfully at the memory of Helga in the coffee shop. "It just never seemed to come up organically."

Gerald put on a shocked face. "What?! Arnold, brother, you gotta _tell_ her. She's probably thinking of ways to apologize and confess to you, man!"

Arnold's eyes went wide. Gerald watched his oldest friend process the memories of all the times Helga had initially pushed him away, only to warmly and sweetly help him or compliment him later. "Oh, _fuck_, dude. What if you're right?" Arnold turned to his friend, looking lost and a little bit overwhelmed. "She used to do that hot-cold routine all the time as kids. I didn't even consider that."

Gerald had the seed planted. When Helga collided with him at the party like a meteor, Arnold's heart would be softened enough to receive the blow. "That's some heeeeeavy stuff, Arnold. You got Lila wheeling around her farm house expecting your safe return; you can't be going back home to her with unfinished business in Hillwood. You gotta tell her at the party."

"The party? Helga's going?" Arnold sounded genuinely hopeful. _It would kill Lila to hear the way he said that._

"Of course she is, man, girl's part of PS118. No way I'd dare exclude her, even on your account." _And she is the lynchpin of the entire plan, _Gerald mused.

"You're right. Even if Helga's planning an apology, I've got to tell her about Lila. And even if she isn't, she deserves to know. It's the right thing to do."

"Yeah, buddy, it sure is." _And it's why you'll fall for the trap, old friend, _Gerald thought with remorse.

Arnold was pinned to destiny by The Right Thing. His years as an orphan had moulded him in the opposite ways Helga's decades of parental neglect had shaped her; Helga had grown to know that nothing in life turned out the way you hoped, and that the only one who had your back was yourself, while Arnold lived rejecting the sadness of that reality, instead embracing the impossible dreams and hopes, and relying on the kindness in others he believed was always present beneath the surface. It's what made him so special. It's what let them do this to him.

Gerald felt a familiar bile rise in his belly, recalling the sour sickness he was left with after meeting Lila. Manipulating his best friend like this was the grossest, most callously vile thing he could imagine. And yet, he knew it was totally necessary, because even though Arnold was a good man, he wasn't always right. He would ruin not just his own life, but maybe two others, blindly chasing Rightness and ignoring the truth in his own heart.

As Arnold began excitedly retelling one of his exciting jungle adventure stories to change the subject, Gerald weighed the moral costs within himself yet again, carefully measuring the gravity of doing nothing versus following the plan. Even now, feeling sickened to his stomach, he knew the answer.

They would keep Arnold; it was the only way.


	5. Chapter 5 - Meteor, Make Me Young

A/N: Apologies for the delay! I wrote this entire chapter once, hated every line, and deleted it all. I had to get it right. It's a Helga chapter, and she's the star of the show after all. Please bear with me as we explore Helga's past, present, and future together with the help of a mirror, Dr. Bliss, Rhonda and Lila. Please enjoy my private little interpretation of my favorite character, and R/R as always.

Keeping Arnold: Chapter 5, Meteor, Make Me Young

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." - Walt Whitman

* * *

Within every crack and cranny of her heart, Helga knew a sort of life-defining love that most of us only ever experience second hand in passionate works of art. It suffused her very essence, pumping her heart with blood, gasping air into her lungs, willing her limbs to moving, giving speech to her thoughts, defining the very boundaries of who she was as an individual. Helga stumbled upon, to her hapless torment, the very thing that propelled Van Gogh to eat yellow paint and cut off his own ear in manic love sickness, the precise alchemical mixture of love that haunted sages of Persia seeking to transfigure gold from clay. She had within her a miracle, and it was sacred, and she kept it tended in secret ways, kept secret even from herself. Helga was helpless against it, a mote of yellow against a vast sea of crimson and fuscia, a galactic nebula of stellar light. She could do no more to shake the roots of it free from her foundation than she could swallow the moon. Even when she spent years denying it, hiding herself from it with terrifying experiences, cheap thrills, sad films, red wine and sleeping pills, it glowed within her, humming the precise harmonic frequency of her very bones. Its vibrations defined the rate at which her atoms shed electrons and spiraled into half-life decay. Her love _was _her.

Helga was currently in the sad state of full acceptance and awareness of how trapped and helpless she was, and the rawness and exhilaration of the sensation of _loving_ had her bent over a toilet in Gerald's frat house at the big party, the wracking sounds of a stone-cold-sober nervous puke nearly drowning out the pounding rhythm of the house music Brainy was meticulously mixing.

Her legs shook under her. She rest her forehead on the toilet, hugging the bowl for purchase. _Thank you for being cool on my head, toilet,_ she reverently thought. _I'm sorry for filling you with puke._ She held her eyes shut, feeling another wave of nausea hit, roll over her like a hot press, and pass on, leaving her shivering in the too-cold bathroom.

"Oh _fuck _how am I gonna do this," she pleaded with the empty room. Beneath her, her black leather pants shined taut against her legs. She followed the muscular swoop of her thigh, following the long limb to its terminal point in a pair of uncharacteristically feminine pink pumps with little black ribbon bows on the toe. She loved these shoes, they were the girliest thing she owned. She bought them in secret, and hid them in the back of her closet where her secret things habitually went. Now, she wore them shyly, feeling awkwardly tall and _leggy_ with them hoisting her butt up in the tight black leather jeans she squirmed into. At least the pants were comfortable; a staple for her shows, decorated at the hips with DIY rivets and studs, they were seemingly _painted_ on her athletic lower half.

She sat up from the toilet, flushing the stress she'd expelled and rising to sit on the edge of the garden tub next to her. For half a second, a wave of cold sickness wobbled her off balance, and she almost fell backwards fully into the tub, before her steady hand on the toilet saved her.

_Take it easy, Helga, old girl. You've got a twelve song set list and ten heavenly, hellish minutes alone with him to get through._

Helga bit her lip, her light speed imagination immediately filling her thoughts with _precisely calibrated _scenes of everything that could _possibly_ unfold in ten minutes. She tasted the hint of pomegranate and mint in her deep crimson lip stain for a brief moment, the thought _I hope he likes pomegranate_ instantly sending a warm, splotchy flush of embarrassment across her neck and collarbones.

Helga regarded her flushed face with skepticism and concern. She had spent an unusual amount of time focusing on her appearance to get ready. Beyond selecting the pink babydoll tshirt with a glittery black Baphoment boldly emblazoned across the front, opting to go with her laciest, blackest bra, and carefully dividing her hair into two perfect ponytails, Helga had also spent time straightening her bangs, detailing her eyebrows into bold, powerful shapes, and carefully selecting the makeup she would wear. She normally didn't wear much; it wasn't her style to slather herself with makeup, and she usually only stuck to a simple concealer and dark eye shadow. She regarded her large, expressive blue eyes with awkward awareness, unsure if the little catlike lines of eyeliner and smoky-red eye shadow was overmuch, or if the little embellishments of gold glitter she lightly dusted under her eyebrows was a tasteful addition. She'd spent the better part of the afternoon watching YouTube makeup tutorials, struggling and snarling with her unpracticed hands when they were clumsy in applying the expert techniques she wished to emulate. Somehow, she'd gotten it done. She recalled Phoebe's audible gasp when she saw Helga, felt again the embarrassed eye of scrutiny from Phoebe as it washed over her.

"Is it too much?" Helga had asked, holding her arm awkwardly, the studded black wrist bangle digging slightly into her wrist.

"Helga, I posit that you have a hidden talent for makeup artistry," Phoebe rushed. "You have somehow managed to look both flashy and toned down simultaneously. I am envious of your restraint and attention to detail."

Helga smiled at herself in the mirror, somehow bolstered by the little memory of her best friend's comment. Maybe Phoebe was right; Helga had struggled to get where she was, but the effect was precisely what she intended. She had just enough color splashed on her face to excite the senses. She was silently thankful that her recent binge-eating junk food hadn't resulted in any breakouts in her skin. Helga had trouble with her skin, even now, and whatever conspiracy had resulted in her clear complexion for the part must have been divine influence. She felt that it surely had to be.

_Maybe this won't be a total disaster._ Helga sat on the rim of the tub, one leg bouncing nervously in cadence to the pulsing rhythm of the song Brainy was currently mixing outside. _I wonder how he's doing,_ she thought, her concerns automatically going to her too-quiet friend and roommate. He never expressed anything but calm, quiet acceptance to Helga. She sometimes wondered what he was really thinking. She knew he was still in love with her - she'd have to be blind not to see it. But he had never made a move on her, and she'd never encouraged it. She was comfortable with the boundaries they'd set.

_If this works, will Brainy still want to live with me?_ She couldn't imagine that he would be cool with her bringing Arnold home after she'd successfully seduced him. Yet that was her precise intention, and her desired end result. Going home with Arnold. The thought made her dizzy, made her stomach flop around within her guts and dredge up all her previously calmed nervousness and stressful worry.

She hadn't made the decision to seduce him lightly. In fact, it was only recently, thanks to Dr. Bliss, that she had gotten anything in her mind for those ten minutes other than a powerful, life-time delayed confession. Now she'd use every weapon of femininity available to her, aimed directly at Arnold's heart and loins without mercy. The mere concept sent her blood clicking through her veins. She felt _high_, she felt _drugged_ by the sensations of anticipation and physical need for him. She had never allowed herself to feel these things for him this intensely. Sure, she'd had her silly teenage fantasies, and was well acquainted with her vibrator, Rusty, but the actual intentional design to commingle Arnold with herself had never been a fantasy she'd allowed herself the indulgence in.

And now she was going to toss the dice and see how they fell.

"Breathe, Helga, _breathe._ You can do this. He's just a boy." She repeated the mantra to herself, standing from the tub to pace the little bathroom she had trapped herself in at the party. It was six paces long, two paces wide. She'd counted them out, the repetitive action bringing her focus when her mind was such a chaotic mess.

"It'll be easy. He's just a stupid boy, and you're mega hot, and you'll knock his socks off." She reasoned with herself, imagining colliding with him like a comet, her body melding against his immediately. It made her stammer and stutter. "A-and you'll j-j-just take the rest off of him t-too." _Whoa. Arnold naked. With me._ She got dizzy at the thought, and had to lead on the bathroom counter for purchase, facing the mirror and unable to look at herself.

_Do I deserve that? _She had to ask herself the question. Helga wasn't sure she was worthy of such an experience. Was anyone worthy of touching the surface of the sun? _It will dirty him._ She frowned at the poisonous thought. She hadn't felt _clean_ in years. She just regarded herself with a helpless acceptance. Helga G. Pataki was corrupted, fucked up, and a mess. Even if she could accept, with Dr. Bliss' help, that she loved Arnold and that it was okay, she still couldn't bring herself to accept that he would feel anything for her except the expected basic human male response to female stimuli.

_It will dirty me._ If she allowed Arnold to be with her, then, knowing that he would only be feeling her with his genitals, and not his heart (she wouldn't accept that as even a remote possibility), did that make her a _slut_? Was she cheap, by letting Arnold _use_ her just for her own silly desires? The thought made her sick. This was a disaster already. Helga felt like the ground was going to swallow her up at any moment, a massive yawning chasm would suddenly sinkhole the entire bathroom and all of its occupants, erasing her forever. She begged for it to be true, she pleaded with the air with her eyes to make her disappear.

A knock at the door brought her back to the party, with the pulsing rhythm of music, the sounds of people shouting and cheering, the stale hot smell of beer and sweat and bodies.

"Hold on a second," Helga breathed. She wasn't ready to go out there yet. She needed more time to prepare. She needed another day, maybe, or a week. Give her another year, and she might be ready to face Arnold.

_When did I get so cowardly?_ She suddenly thought. Helga G Pataki used to be a fearless force of nature. In High School. she was voted the prom queen just by the sheer force of her personality. She smiled, remembering with relish Rhonda's outrage when Helga smiled and waved at her from on stage, wearing _her_ tiara and holding _her _flowers. People respected her, people _feared_ her. Helga hadn't merely withered away when Arnold left. She'd receded within herself, found that she was missing pieces, and rebounded back outwards twice as sharp and hard as before. Why, then, was she feeling so brittle, so vulnerable now?

_It's because he is the missing pieces you lost. He's back now, and you're afraid of not being able to find the missing pieces in time. You're afraid of losing him again._ Helga took a shaking breath, forcing air through her lungs.

The knock came again, more aggressively.

"I said just a fucking second! Criminy, you must not be fond of that hand you keep pounding the door with, 'cause I'm half a moment from coming out there and tearing it off!" There was the old fury. It steadied her, somehow, to feel something other than panic, even if it was blind rage at an anonymous intruder.

She heard Phoebe's voice.

"Helga, it's Phoebe. I lost my purse. It's imperative that we recover it _immediately._ The purse contains my cell phone, which has the precise timetables and instructions for the night's events. Arnold's almost arrived; we need to find the purse before he gets here."

Helga sighed. Phoebe. Despite being the smartest person she'd ever met, Phoebe had always had a slightly sloppy, hapless side. It had been exposed when she broke her leg, and when she cheated.

"Just a minute, Pheebs. I'll be right out and we'll find it together." Together. Helga chewed the word, recognizing that she was not alone in this. Practically everyone at PS118 had jumped on board when Gerald sent out his instructions for the party. Everybody knew their role, everybody had their part to play. And she could rely on the fact that most of them would fuck it up, but Gerald and Phoebe had planned for that, too.

Really, they'd anticipated everything. _Everything except for when you seduce Arnold._ She blushed at the thought, but the micron of steel resolve she'd found kept her steady. _But they don't have to know about that._

Helga reached into her pocket, pulling the soft, rolled-up fabric of her ribbon free and unfolding it in her hands. _So much has happened since that day._ He always liked her ribbon. He mentioned it specifically when he saw her again for the first time in ten years. She took a breath, and reached behind her head, tying it behind her bangs into a big, folded bow that rest between her pigtails. Taking one last look at herself, correcting her bangs and pushing her tits up for inspection, Helga wrapped up her private pep talk with herself.

"You're a fucking hurricane. You're a typhoon, a force of goddamned nature. Helga G. Pataki, your love is cosmic, and invincible, and you have unlimited strength. Fuck this party up. _Fuck this party up._ This is your night."

She sighed once, a long, heavy exhale carrying the last of her jitters away. "And you've been waiting ten years for this moment. It's time to tell Arnold how much you love him."

She was satisfied. Helga opened the bathroom door and stepped out into the press of the crowd with Phoebe to start hunting down her purse, her mind chewing through the details of the night ahead of her.

* * *

"Thanks for seeing me on such short notice, doc," Helga slumped into the couch in Dr. Bliss' office, feeling physically and mentally drained. She'd practiced with Gerald and Brainy until their fingers blistered, and folded paper cranes and scanned letter after letter into her MacBook with Phoebe until the blisters bled and cracked. Every available second was devoted to the frightening anticipation of the party the next day, and her planned confrontation with Arnold. She was ramping up to a panic attack when she called her psychologist, desperate for help.

"Of course, Helga. It's been a long time since you called me needing immediate help outside of our monthly visits. Why don't you tell me what's going on?" Dr. Bliss sat in her chair passively, the lovely woman always a patient and friendly source of attention for Helga. She always looked forward to their appointments, and never missed a single one. Even when she had spiralled out of control when Arnold left, she'd made her appointments without fail. In fact, she made more of them, sometimes visiting daily. She just needed the kind of womanly care and attentiveness she got from Dr. Bliss that wasn't ever going to come from anywhere else.

"Well, doc, it's kind of like this. Arnold's come back to Hillwood." Helga put her palms on her eyes, squeezing until she saw colors light up against the black blanket of her eyelids.

Helga heard Dr. Bliss sputter as she sipped her coffee, setting the cup down hastily. Helga peeked at her with one eye, a little surprised her normally unflappable doctor would startle.

"Ya alright, doc? You really shouldn't be the one surprised by that, ya know."

"No, I'm sorry, I know. How sloppy of me. I was just happy for you for a moment." Dr. Bliss smiled at Helga. Helga loved that feeling. It made her shy, so she got surly.

"_Happy _for me? It's just about the worst possible thing that could have happened."

"Is that how you really feel, Helga?" Dr. Bliss sounded skeptical. It always bothered Helga how astute and insightful she could be, especially when it came to Arnold.

"_No_, it's not how I really feel. Of course it isn't. I'm beside myself, totally loopy gaga nuts! I can't believe he's back. It's been _ten years_, I had gotten so used to his absence that I just took it for granted. I'm just a tiny bit overwhelmed, to be honest."

Dr. Bliss nodded while she listened. She never took notes with Helga. Helga appreciated that, because it gave her the illusion that her doctor never wrote anything she said down. She knew that somewhere there were observational reports and whatnot for insurance purposes, but Helga liked feeling that her sessions with Dr. Bliss were too intimate to write down.

"I think that is perfectly normal and natural. After all, a young man you have cared deeply about and who left at a critical point in your childhood has suddenly returned to your life. It must feel quite nostalgic."

Helga sat up quickly, alert and excited. "Yes! That's exactly it, nostalgic. It's like everything is all sepia toned and idyllic now. I see the town in an almost new light, except it's the _old_ light. Like from before he left. Hell, I even felt like calling Miriam."

Dr. Bliss raised her eyebrows, folding her hands in her lap. "The desire to contact wrinkles in our past is especially strong when we are allowed an opportunity to revisit it. Did you make contact?"

Helga chewed her lip. She didn't want to talk about Miriam today, she just wanted to talk about Arnold. "I did. It was weird."

"How did it make you feel to contact your mother? If I recall, you haven't spoken to her since last year. Christmas, wasn't it?"

Helga frowned at the memory. Brainy had convinced her to call Miriam on Christmas Day. He'd patiently looked at her the way he did, and set her phone in front of her, just saying "Miriam." Helga had stared at her phone, holding onto her chair for stability and purchase. Finally, she had called. Miriam had been drunk, and a sad mess. She was so excited that Helga called she sloppily slurred about every incident in her sad, mundane life until she had started to uncontrollably cry. Helga had been sick to her stomach, and made excuses, and ended the call. She didn't make contact again, until last night.

"Yes, and it felt weird. She's doing better, I just..." Helga gathered the air in front of her into a sigh, remembering last night's call. "She's still drinking. She wasn't as sloppy as Christmas but _how could she be_. But she is still making her damn _smoothies _and forgetting things. She thought I called because it was my _birthday_. I tried talking to her about things, but I just got off the phone as fast as possible when the waterworks started."

"It was very brave to challenge your comfort zone like that, especially when you feel so overwhelmed by Arnold."

Helga wasn't so sure. "You think so, doc? It felt like a little kid running home to mommy because the boy she liked scared her."

"Mm, that might play a small part in it. But remember, Arnold is resurfacing a lot of emotions and memories. The desire to tie up loose ends will be especially strong right now."

"Yeah well there's _one_ frayed goddamn knot I'd like to tie off, and beaucoups fast. This Arnold problem is making me fucking loco."

"I can tell. You're usually less colorful with your language in our visits."

Helga blushed genuinely embarrassed that the woman she liked and respected so much caught a glimpse of her foul mouth.

"Ah, shit, sorry doc. I, uh, cuss like a sailor. When I'm not here, I mean. I'm stressed out, it's going to bleed into our conversation. Apologies in advance,"

"It doesn't offend me, Helga. In fact, it's a useful indicator of your current psychological state. You must be very stressed and strained to let your standard street behavior inform our session. You are usually restrained."

There was that sharp insight Helga loathed and relied upon so much. Helga pondered something for half a beat, and then loaded her ammo.

"Hey doc, how come you never got married?" Helga had been saving that one for a special occasion. She felt that Arnold merited the moment.

"Well," Dr. Bliss began hesitantly. "That's a big question. I suppose it's because the opportunity never arose, and because I am usually very busy with my work."

"Yeah but I know you've had a guy or two since we started." Helga kept her snooping a secret, but the fact was that Helga was as resourceful as Gerald could be. Sometimes more so, when people she loved were the subject of her subterfuges.

"Yes, I suppose I did date a man or two. But none of them seemed ready for the commitment at the time. Or I wasn't ready. Once, both. The stars never aligned there for me. Maybe they still will."

"Yeah but how did you know they weren't ready? Or that you weren't for that matter?"

Dr. Bliss smiled at Helga, canting her head slightly to regard her patient with curiosity. "These are rather inexperienced and youthful questions for a patient I usually find to be far more mature and insightful. Are you feeling confused?"

_Dammit,_ Helga thought. _She's reading my moves again._

"Arnold's just got me all mixed up, okay? How did you know you weren't ready for something major and dramatic?" For such a furious, powerful soul, Helga always felt weak and insecure and _childlike_ when it came to love and commitment. She'd spent her whole life in a one sided love, that everything else seemed like a fake she wasn't interested in or a fairy tale she could never have.

"I suppose that experience has taught me that I will be ready when my heart and my brain are aligned. When I can logically agree to what my passions irrationally want, well then I have nothing to lose."

Helga blinked at the explanation. She had never once felt like her heart and brain were aligned. The concept felt utterly _alien _to her. She had no concept of what that would look like. From her vantage point, she would always be forced to pick sides between her heart and her brain, and let one fall to the wayside in total favor of the other.

"Well right now, my heart wants him and my brain says I'm no good for him, so he shouldn't waste his time on me." Helga found it difficult to say out loud. She felt a throb of emotion chunk up in her throat, threatening to bring tears with it.

"I think that is a totally normal insecurity to attach to a boy you think so highly of. We have a hard time seeing our own self worth as it is. It's one of those timeless struggles poets and philosophers have been puzzling over since antiquity. And that just becomes doubly difficult when the heroic ideal of what we aspire to is held up in comparison. I don't think your assessment is accurate, but no amount of logic will convince your _brain _that your _heart_ is in the right."

Helga rolled onto her side, watching Dr. Bliss carefully. She was about to get to the point, the dramatic pivot that Helga would use to navigate these troubled seas, and the storm named Arnold.

"I think you have displayed remarkable maturity and depth to listen to your brain's ideas at the expense of ten years of heart's desire. The restraint is admirable, but ultimately I don't think it's the right move for you right now."

Helga's thick eyebrows arched high. She didn't know what to say. "You're saying...what, that I should...what _are _you saying."

Dr. Bliss adopted the look she wore when she gave Helga an Official Suggestion. These were serious, and Helga had learned to listen to them all or she would inevitably regret it.

"I am saying that after ten years of listening to your brain, it's time to let the heart drive the Helgamobile for a little while. We talked about your letters many times, and you always came to the very mature conclusion that your letters would merely be hurtful and painful to read. I felt that working through those thought processes and emotions was excellent therapy for your self-confidence and self-image issues, and you came out of a very dark place stronger and more psychologically sound than I would have ever expected.

"_However_," she pivoted her tone, gently articulating her point to Helga. Her patient listened with wide eyed intensity, hanging on her every word. "That stage of your psychological development is completed and it has served its purpose. And now Arnold is back. We have a golden opportunity for you to finish putting the last piece of the Helga puzzle in place, but first you have to give in."

"G-give in? What do you mean, doc?"

"You need to surrender your brain to your heart now, and confront Arnold. It's time you told him how you feel."

Helga sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the couch. She stared at her shoes, trembling slightly. Dr. Bliss was almost _never _wrong. If her heart wanted Arnold no matter the cost, but her brain was doubtful and trying to look after his best interests, wouldn't it be _selfish_ to pick her own feelings over his?

"Doc, isn't that a bit _selfish?"_

"You bet." Dr. Bliss responded without hesitation. Helga had no idea how she managed to seem so sure of herself. It must be those decades of experience and training.

Helga chewed her lip just as she chewed the morsel Dr. Bliss had just fed her. She hadn't been selfish about Arnold in _years_. She'd stopped the scheming and the tricks when he left. Of course, she used to get up to _plenty._ She practically lived to harass him, keep him away from other girls, and ruin his day whenever he stopped paying attention to her. It had been fun. It had been how she expressed her love to him, secretly forcing him to be around her and pay attention to her and think about her. She liked when he thought about her. She felt herself smiling involuntarily, and felt very aware of Dr. Bliss's smile aimed right at her.

"Doc, I know you're all Cheshire over there, but you're gonna need to sell me on this one. It feels-"

"Frightening. I know. But I just remember the sad little girl that sat on my couch, her heart broken, speaking to me as if every year she'd lived had been worth three of anyone else's. Giving Arnold up. _Letting him be._ Helga, it was remarkable. I've been working with you for a very long time, and that moment is still one of the most powerful we've ever had. You should be _proud_ of that. But you should also be ready to _undo_ all of it. It's time.

"Arnold is back now, and there's no reason to keep yourself from being Helga with him anymore. He's a grown person, and he's lived his childhood without any disruption from you, just like you wanted. I think it was good for you to give him that, and I think he probably appreciates it more than he even realizes. You've done your good deed; time to cash in on the reward."

Helga wasn't so sure. What would she even _do?_ So far, her plan was to have a big dramatic goodbye with Arnold in a private room somewhere after the equally dramatic show. The party was how she intended to _close_ the door on Arnold, and now her psychologist, maybe the person whose insights she respected and trusted the most in the world, was suggesting that she not only keep the door open, that she _rip_ it off the hinges.

"What if he rejects me?" She couldn't imagine Arnold would accept her. Not after her icy rejection at the coffee shop, and not after ten years of no responses from her.

"Oh, Helga, if you finally pour your heart out to him, and finally use all that creative energy you've been building and building over the years to express to him every feeling you've been wanting to tell him but never could, I couldn't imagine he would be anything but deeply and sincerely touched. We've talked about Arnold for years. Arnold is a major focal point in your life, and while I've always felt that he was good for you, he's also been in your way every step of the way. He's both your beacon and your albatross."

"So, say I agree, and I just decide to spill my guts all over him tomorrow night. What if the literally impossible happens and he reciprocates my feelings but still wants to leave? I couldn't handle that, doc. I can't handle hearing him say that he l-l-loves me again, and then leave." Helga stared at her hands helplessly. That was it. She'd finally said it. Her real fear.

Because Helga remembered with vivid, perfect clarity the moment that Arnold confessed to her. It was the single happiest moment of her life. She'd never forget it, as long as she lived.

She and Arnold were alone, separated from the rest of the group. Arnold had been trying to tell Helga something the whole trip, but Helga had been avoiding him and unusually surly. Truthfully, she was afraid, afraid of what Arnold kept trying to tell her. He'd been acting unusually towards her ever since the TPI thing, and then the whole April Fool's Day thing. Arnold had been paying a lot of attention to her, asking her things, spending time around her when she was used to being the one hanging around.

Finally, he had cornered her. She was tired, and sweaty, and she looked terrible. Helga recalled the thrill in her arm when Arnold had taken her hand when he finally got her alone, and the screaming pounding terror she felt when he drew in close and locked eyes.

"Helga," he had said. She remembered trying to swallow with a dry throat. She smelled his sweat, he was so close. "You've been avoiding me this whole trip now, and I've just been trying to talk to you. I just wanted to thank you," he stepped closer to her.

"Th-thank me? What for, _Football_ Head. And back off, you're getting t-too close to me," her voice had none of the typical venom it usually could muster. She sounded as nervous as she felt.

"I won't back off. I don't think you think I'm too close. In fact, I know you like when I'm close because you told me." Arnold held eye contact, and Helga was pinned in place by his stare. "I didn't forget what you said, and I don't think you said it in the _heat of the moment._ You really _do _love me, don't you?"

Helga remembered the immediate dizziness, then the anger that he cornered her and demanded her feelings from her. Like some sort of _brute._ She shoved herself free of him, pushing Arnold over onto his butt. She towered over him, clenching a fist. "Yeah, what of it? So I love you, you little shrimp. Don't think that lets you _grab_ me and make demands of me, Football Head. In fact, don't go assuming I want you _around_ all the time either. You've been following me around and making a lot of trouble for me since this stupid trip _started._"

Helga recalled with sadness the way he looked up at her. Genuine hurt. Then anger. She sighed while Dr. Bliss watched her think, remembering the lesson she had learned hard that day: little boys are not the best at processing their feelings into constructive forms of expression.

"Fine! You know what Helga, I really thought I could finally get you to open up to me, but even when you admit that you care about me, you literally push me away. I'm sick of it! It's so confusing!" Arnold stood back up, getting right back in her face, but this time with an accusing finger in her chest. "You don't get to string me along and tell me you _love_ me and then act like nothing's _changed_ and push me around. It's selfish. Stop and think about someone else for half a second - think about how it might be hurting my feelings."

"H-Hurting you? _Hurting_ you? Hah! What do you know of pain, Football Head? I've been pining over you, _unrequited _I might add, for seven years! How's that for pain? And just about every time I tried to be _nice_ to you for a change, you get all in my face and act like a total jerk. Like the stupid egg assignment!"

Arnold ignored her accusation and went right to the heart of it. "Who says it's unrequited?"

Helga had frozen in place. She can recall, with absolute precision, the sounds of the jungle then, the constant noise of _life_ everywhere around her, the smell of wet plants and decaying matter and her sweat, the constant dull heat that hovered over everything like a blanket. She remembers the look on Arnold's face, how cute he looked all sweaty with his shirt opened extra buttons. She can remember, without error, how Arnold looked, sounded, and smelled when he said it.

"I love you, Helga. I have for a long time, I just didn't know what it was I felt, or how to say it. You've _always_ been there, if not for me, _with_ me. I don't just like you like you. I love you."

Helga put her face in her hands. The rest of the memory was kissing. She felt herself grow flush at the ghostly sensation of his clumsy lips finding hers, and the frightening passion his ten year old heart could express in a kiss. It had been _intense._ And then, too soon, Gerald found them, and the moment was over.

And not long after all of that, he chose to leave her.

_That_ was what she was afraid of. She was afraid of being given a moment of happiness and then immediately punished for it with another ten years or a lifetime of sorrow. She couldn't handle that happening twice. She wouldn't. Given the choice, she'd rather cut it all off at the pass, and say goodbye. But her doctor recommended that she give it another shot.

"Doc, I trust you." She finally spoke.

"Good. I've worked hard to earn that trust."

"I'm just not convinced you're right here." Helga looked up at Dr. Bliss from her hands. She was really afraid. She hoped her doctor could see it.

"Well the choice is of course yours. I can only offer my professional opinion - and if I am honest, my personal opinion. Relationship advice is usually outside the scope of what a psychologist offers, but you're important to me as a patient and as a friend. I want you to be happy, and I think you have a good shot at it."

Helga took a shuddering breath, rubbing her eyes with her palms once more. Finally, she stood up, her decision made.

"Alright. I'll do it. Arnold has _no idea_ what he's in store for, but, I'll tell him everything. I'll _do_ everything. All of this...this frustration, and anticipation and _want_ is coming out, tomorrow night."

Dr. Bliss smiled and stood with Helga, extending her hand for a professional shake. Helga lunged and hugged her instead, squeezing her favorite doctor with all the affection she could muster.

"Thank you Dr. Bliss. I'll make you proud."

* * *

"As I live and _breathe_ Helga Pataki you look _divine_," Rhonda Wellington Lloyd gasped. In the party's press of people, Helga had not seen that she was headed directly for the precise individual she had no interest in seeing.

"Hello _Rhonda_," she spat, her voice acid and bitter.

"_Love_ the shoes. Tres cute. Love the party, too, what a genius little plan. It's positively _devious._ Don't worry, I remember the words."

Helga scowled at her, deciding to close the distance a little and assert herself. "Good. Don't fuck this up for me, Lloyd, or you'll end up a cautionary tale to frighten little rich girls at bedtime."

"Oh, Helga, you always were a kidder. So tell me true, have you seen him yet? Arnold? Isn't he _divine_? It's like he's stepped out of a classical painting, all bronzed and strong looking. And oh, _that hair._"

Helga was working her way around the crowd, but Rhonda was following her. She and Phoebe had split up to find the purse ten minutes ago, and Helga was headed to the rooms upstairs. She suddenly couldn't shed her parasitic hop-along, despite all the scowls and threats.

"Yeah, I saw him a few days ago. What of it?"

"Don't tell me you didn't try to tap that." Rhonda laughed her wanton laugh, lifting her cocktail glass to her delicately stained red lips which had curved into a wicked little smile. Helga turned to her, squaring off her shoulders. Rhonda should have recognized it as a warning sign.

"Tell me, after the little show and tell are you planning on getting him alone? If I were you, I'd be itching to jump his bones. All that adolescent _longing_ you know? My god, the years surely must have added expo_nentially_ to his passion. Mmh, and _those arms._ Why, I'd like to-" Rhonda was interrupted by Helga's hand snatching her glass from her hands right as it was poised at her pursed lips. Rhonda watched in horror when Helga belted the glass back, shooting the entire contents in a single gulp. She hurled the glass to the side, smashing it uselessly against a wall, and locked a savage look with Rhonda's very surprised one.

"Look here, _princess_, what happens between me and Arnold after the show is going to be _fucking legendary._ You'll be hearing about it in sorrowful news reports for years. There's gonna be a fucking candle light vigil in memory of the _tragic loss of life_ in the collateral damage. I'm sure your tiny, limited imagination has all kinds of boring fantasies of six minutes of missionary queued up for you to titter over your bubblegum vodka cocktails-that tasted like fucking garbage by the way-but just recognize that before you stands _a nightmare_ wreathed in _sex and gunsmoke._ You just play your part, look pretty, and keep your fucking mouth as shut as you're genetically capable of."

Rhonda's mouth hung agape, raw shock painted over every millimeter of her face. Helga snorted triumphantly, stalking up the stairs freshly clear of the annoying satellite intent on intruding into her evening. Somehow, she felt remarkably like her old self, half-cocked and ready to tumble, but grounded to a sweet and tender foundation of affection for someone greater than herself.

"God_damn_ I feel _great_! It's like the cork on my personality has been mysteriously popped off by some unknowable cosmic force. It's like Helga Pataki can _breathe_ again, I can extend my arms and walk with confidence! Criminy, I'm even threatening Rhonda again-OUTTA the way, you slack-jawed mouth breather-" Helga savagely shoved someone out of her way, nearly sending them toppling down the stairs. "Shit, a girl can't even walk around anymore without having to assert her personal space. You people need to be aware," she snarled to the crowd around her, "Helga G. Pataki is coming through. Dawdle at your fucking peril, _lumps._ I got a purse to find, a show to kill, and a boy's heart to claim."

Helga smiled at herself with satisfaction when the crowd parted for her. She marched into the first bedroom in her path, barrelling through the door.

Two people, mostly exposed skin, leapt up from the bed in the room in surprise. Helga growled and rolled her eyes. "Oh brother, _seriously?_ The party's barely even started and you're _already_ taking clothes off? Show some restraint, for Pete's sake. Now hurry up and get out. Get the fuck out!"

The couple, grabbing for their clothes while Helga lectured them, threw on what clothes they could and ducked out of the room in embarrassment. Helga rolled her eyes skyward when she heard the libidinous jeering from the crowd outside immediately upon their exit.

"Jesus Christ, it's like the whole house is hopped up on human growth hormone. Bunch of wild dogs, all of them eager for the pathetic, pawing ministrations of one another in some desperate attempt to know the tender, sincere affections of another. How little they know. How they disgust me. How trite and trivial they all seem, laid to measure against the giant of my love. Ah, Arnold! How I anticipate your surprise. How exciting it will be, my love, to see your features when the truest expression of my tender affections is finally unveiled before you! How little you know of the juggernaut within me, laid low by years of restraint as chivalrous and heroic as any Red Crosse Knight. Ah, Arnold, my Isolde, let me be your Tristram and embrace you in love's most purest expression! Ah, Arnold, sweetest desire, most painful of needs, how the minutes seem to-" a savage buzzing somewhere in the room interrupted her sudden onset monologue. Helga scowled, picking up where she left of. "How the minutes seem to-" _Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz. _"Oh for fuck's sake!" She snarled, stalking off to the corner where the insidious note repeatedly harshed her mellow.

Helga snickered to herself victoriously, stepping into the corner to see Phoebe's purse.

"Well all right. Not bad, Pataki. Now we can finally end this stupid goose chase."

The buzzing in the purse ceased. Helga snorted at the minor victory-she counted the annoyance ending as a victory somehow-and started to leave the room.

_Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz._

The buzzing returned. Phoebe's phone was being dialed off the hook. Helga's left eyebrow twitched, and she opened the purse impatiently, snatching the phone free.

Her eyes gawked at the caller ID.

"_Lila Sawyer?_ What the fuck is _miss perfect_ doing calling Phoebe?" Helga didn't even hesitate. She swiped the screen, accepting the call and bringing it to her ear.

Lila started talking immediately, hearing the line pick up on her end.

"Phoebe! Phoebe, I'm ever so glad I finally was able to catch you. I hope it's not too late, oh, I'm ever so hopeful it's not too late! I want you to call it off. I was wrong, I was _ever so_ wrong. I can't bear it, I can't bear to imagine my Arnold being _tricked_ all for my silly insecurities-and I'm terrified you'll be successful. I can't lose him, I'm ever so scared that he'll change his mind after all! You have to call it off, please, I'm begging you! Don't let Helga play for him tonight!"

Helga's mind was a maelstrom, a swirling collection of confused eddies of thought, coalescing around a central point. Phoebe had been talking to Lila for some reason, about Arnold, and about the party, and about _her._ Something was going on between Lila and Arnold - the fact that Lila called him "_my Arnold_" wasn't lost on her in the slightest - and even more so, Phoebe knew what it was and intentionally hid it from her. She felt mad. She felt scared. She felt sickeningly betrayed. But, more than anything, she felt _powerful_.

Because _she_ had picked up the phone. Not Phoebe.

"I'm real sorry to tell ya, toots," Helga began, and she heard Lila squeak in surprise to hear her voice. "But Phoebe's not here. It's just old Helga. So tell me, _Lila_, what's the story here?"

"H-H_-Helga?_ Wh-what are you-" Lila stammered, clearly taken by surprise.

"Never you mind, Sawyer. Doesn't matter how I got the call. Just matters that I did. So why don't you do me the honor of filling me in, for old time's sake." Helga's voice carried a dangerous note, a promise of something terrible to come.

"N-no, Helga, you don't understand. There's circumstances - I can explain, but you need to listen to me."

"Listen to you? Hon, you're all mixed up. I don't gotta listen to you, not unless you've got something _worthwhile_ to say. Why don't you start with Arnold. Fill me in on what this "my Arnold" business is all about. What, you got the hots for Football Head now?"

"I'm, well, yes, I'm in love with him, and-"

"Ohohoho, of course you are. Why wouldn't you be? Well that's just peachy. Everybody loves Arnold! Everybody can be in love with Arnold now. It'll be one big huge clusterfuck. I'll love Arnold, you'll love Arnold, we'll _all_ just be in love with Arnold!"

Lila started to say something, but Helga cut her off sharply. "Except that's not even close to how this is gonna go, Sawyer. I don't know _what_ the fuck is going on between you and Phoebe. I'll find out, mind you, but it's fucking moot at this exact juncture. 'Cause guess what? The show's on, sister. That's right, the show is _on._ Twelve songs, one big fucking glorious finish, and then _ten sweet minutes_ alone with our sweet, innocent little Football Head. He won't be too innocent for much longer, _Lila._ So say your goodbyes to whatever virtue you thought he had - Arnold's mine. And I'm going to take him from you. I'll take him from _anyone_ that gets in my way. I don't care how many bodies I have to step over, I don't care _who_ I have to betray, what oaths I must break, or what friendships I must forsake. Arnold belongs to _Helga Geraldine Pataki _as of tonight. You'd do well to settle that out with whatever gods you believe in, 'cause it's a _fucking fact._"

Helga turned the phone off to the sound of Lila's shocked, devastated pleading. She felt numb to her rival's pain, and felt triumphantly powerful. She felt invincible, like she had discovered the enemy's secret weakness and exploited it flawlessly.

Calmly, she hummed one of her songs to herself as she deleted all of Lila's texts and incoming calls, and blocked her number on Phoebe's phone. Smiling diabolically to herself, she dropped the phone in Phoebe's purse, and sweetly called out.

"Oh Phoebe! I found your purse~!"

Grimly imagining the ways in which she might extract the truthful details of Phoebe's betrayal, Helga stepped out into the party, more than prepared for the night before her, armed to the teeth with weapons of femininity and guile.

_Oh yes, Arnold __will__ be mine, or I'm not Helga Geraldine motherfucking Pataki._ She smiled to herself. Time for the show to begin.


	6. Chapter 6 - Young and Happy!

A/N: Here it is, the party! Sorry it's taken this long to get an update up. Fighting off a cold and it took me away from my obsession. Anyway, here's finally an Arnold POV. He's got a lot to say and show, and the Party promises to deliver the most interesting events yet. So strap in, this will be the longest chapter so far by a country mile. This is by NO means the end, but perhaps the first climax of many to come. Once again, the songs are not mine, merely chosen for their relevance and inspirational qualities to the story. Songs: "I Get Nervous" by Lower Dens, "Tibetan Pop Stars" by Hop Along, and "Young and Happy!" by Hop Along. I highly recommend you check these artists out! Hop Along is basically my inspiration for this entire story. I will remove all song lyrics at the original artist's request - but I doubt they'd mind. Enjoy the show.

Keeping Arnold: Chapter 6, Young and Happy!

"Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?" - Leo Tolstoy

* * *

Arnold Shortman stared at the long tunnel extending from the passenger jet he just spent ten hours nervously anticipating this very moment on. At the other end of the tunnel was Hillwood, or at least the short taxi ride from the international airport to that smaller satellite city he once called home. There was Helga. There was his past.

A bump on his back triggered his momentary return to the present, and the press of impatient passengers with their own lives to return to ushered the ever considerate Arnold to cross the threshold. He shouldered the even weight of his military-grade duffle bag, all fifty pounds of his belongings carefully packed, rolled, and stowed away within. His mother and father had outfit him with the rugged pack as a gift when he was much younger, explaining to him that it was designed so that the average weight of whatever he put inside would come out to around fifty pounds, total. It made trekking through the jungle much easier, and travel a trivial burden. It was one of the many practical, pragmatic things his parents had taught him in ten years of humanitarian work, private tutoring, and globe-trotting adventure.

He watched the dusty boots on his feet pull him forward through the lonely, air-jet cooled boarding tunnel. The white dust on his boots was clay from a rock salt quarry in Brazil; Stella and Miles had said their goodbyes to him there just two days before, working on negotiating the miner's rights with the American-owned minerals conglomerate. That's where they'd been for the last six months, and where they'd likely be until filial duties to their son obliged them return to the country they found themselves constantly working against.

Arnold had been shocked, he recalled, when he learned that his mother and father were basically comunistas that had changed their mission to education and protection of the indigenous tribes like the Green Eyes through organizing their elders against the encroaching powers of the capitalist first world. He had ideas about their proclivities from the journal, but, the truth of their ordeals had been quite the eye-opener.

Arnold stood outside the tunnel, surrounded by the press of people eager to get to their next gate. Air travel had simply changed so much since he was a kid; he recalled the first time he was at an airport, and being allowed all the way up to the terminal gate. He recalled seeing families expectant and joyous to see the arrival of their loved ones. He was always touched, but slightly saddened by the particular ritual of an airport reunion. He often fantasized about Helga meeting him at some airport gate, almost bouncing with excitement to see him.

The reality of the world, he had learned, was that things progressed towards pushing people apart. Gone were the crowds of lovers and loved ones to greet the weary travelers. There was just the next gate now, the next destination, the reclamation of protected and checked belongings.

_Everyone is so alone_. Arnold progressed through the airport towards security checkout and customs, reciting the exact words he would repeat to the border agents. _I hold dual citizenry in San Lorenzo and America. I am returning home from educational travel. I have nothing to declare._ It was mostly true. Technically, nothing he had in his pack was illegal. Just frowned upon.

His mind kept drifting to the immediate future while he waited in line at customs. What does Helga look like? Is she still mean and sour? Did she get tall? Does she still have one eyebrow? He felt the kernel of guilt within him twinge when he noticed he was only thinking of her. It was an ugly thing, something he had to swallow now. He would feel guilty when he thought about Helga, probably forever. It was a consequence of chasing his future, and of making Lila happy in the best way he could._ I'm doing the right thing_, he thought to himself, stepping up to the customs agent.

"Name, country of origin, and do you have anything to declare?" She seemed bored. She asked this question thousands of times a day. She probably barely flinched when they arrested someone, Arnold thought.

"Arnold Shortman. I hold dual citizenry in San Lorenzo and America. I am returning home from educational travel. I have nothing to declare." His voice was easy, calm. He held eye contact, and didn't shift his weight around a lot. He had reason to be nervous.

The customs agent eyed his dusty boots and jeans, looking him up and down, before deciding something inwardly, and stamping his passport.

"Welcome home, Mr. Shortman. Baggage claim is to the left."

He took his passport, offering her a "Thanks, have a nice day," and mostly meaning it. Inwardly, he was relieved. He'd made it through with the plant. I'm not doing anything illegal, this genus of plant is native to Canada. Non-native and invasive species laws are specific enough. A different species of a native genus is allowed under the right circumstances. The plant. It was probably Lila's best hope at nerve therapy, if they got the right people to look at it. Stella had spent the better part of the last few months looking for it in Brazil, one of the other reasons they made the trip South. The whole Shortman family felt terrible about what had happened, and all three had agreed, without much discussion, to do everything in their power to help her.

Arnold stood outside the airport, smelling the sulphurous, stale, sour stink of the late-summer roads. America just had a different smell to him now. Or maybe it was the smell it had all along, and he had never noticed it._ It's weird to be back,_ he recognized. _The air is so dry._

A taxicab, the bright yellow of Helga's hair, pulled into the long circular drive at the loading bay area of the airport terminals, slowing to stop in front of Arnold when he held out his hand. Arnold swung his heavy, drab pack into the trunk, slamming it shut, and climbed into the backseat.

"Llévame a Hillwood, por favor," he automatically rattled off. The cabby turned bodily in his front seat, eyeing Arnold. He was tan, but had that bright, sun-drenched blonde hair of a lifetime spent outside. He carried the dirt of a Brazilian rock salt quarry, and hadn't shaved in a few weeks. The cab driver pulled an eyebrow high, not saying anything.

"Ah, sorry. Uh, Hillwood. Please." Arnold felt embarrassed. Spanish was one of those languages almost everybody spoke in the Americas. He was unused to the stares he was getting now that he was coming home. The cab driver wordlessly turned back around, pulling into traffic to start the drive.

Arnold breathed a sigh of relief. He was back. He wasn't home, but he was back. It felt nostalgic, more powerfully than any of the pictures he'd obsessively kept in pristine condition of his childhood friends. That folio was carefully wrapped in bubble-wrap packaging plastic, at the bottom of his pack, where it was safest. He had looked at every picture of his younger self with his old friends as he packed it, spending an hour slowly turning over the pages of the binder by the light of his cellphone. So many memories. An electric anticipation surged through him. He wanted to see them all.

Most of all, he wanted to see Helga.

The plan was to head to the boarding house and see his grandparents first. Phil took his calls every week, always managing to complain when Arnold called collect. Gertie sometimes answered the phone, all excited, calling him "Robinson Crusoe" and asking him how the bushmen were treating him. He smiled fondly, thinking of them, his spirit always gallened that somehow, time hadn't really touched either of them. Phil walked with a cane now, but was still just as salty, unscrupulous, and scheming as always. Gertie was in remarkable shape, probably owing to all the karate she practiced, and was still hopping around the boarding house by all accounts. Even if his entire world had shifted dramatically when he decided to stay with his parents, the anchor of his world, his loving grandparents, had remained the lighthouse he could point his soul at for purchase. Phil was always there with half-cocked advice, and Gertie was always there with outrageous wisdom that she cloaked and obfuscated with what seemed like nonsense and rambling.

He hoped seeing them again brought him a bit of stability, something resembling a recognizable foundation that would make this return trip less terrifying.

A light late summer rain draped over the windows of the taxi, slipping him into a veil of grey mist as he was brought back home. The black interior of the cab was almost womb like, stifling hot, and smelling like bodies. Within the well-traveled memories of his past, nothing had ever felt so alien and isolating as the lonely ride back to Hillwood.

* * *

"Hey, is that Arnold?" a person that reminded Arnold remarkably of Sid shouted out. He was sitting on the stoop of the red brick frat house, rolling something to smoke and surrounded by a group of people Arnold didn't recognize. Arnold didn't reply at first, walking slowly to the party to keep his nerves in check. Closer, he saw that it was indeed his old friend Sid; black hair slicked back, wearing a black western pearl snap shirt tucked into skinny black jeans, which had their cuffs rolled up to expose recently polished and shined black ostrich skin leather boots. Arnold could hardly believe the well-dressed figure was Sid even with that familiar bold and prominent nasal profile, but when he stood up eagerly to throw a big hug around Arnold, a wave of familiarity and excitement crashed into him.

"Sid!" Arnold could hardly articulate the surprise he felt. Sid tucked the hand-rolled cigarette behind his ear, shaking Arnold's hand firmly.

"Hot damn, Arnold, it's way cool to see you. I figured you'd be shorter; I owe Stinky fifty bucks." Arnold saw tattoos on Sid's forearms, dark shapes and figures he couldn't make out but that reminded him strongly of the kinds of things he saw on cartel enforcers. It unnerved him, but he pushed it out of his mind, focusing on the brief reunion.

"Yeah, it's good to be back. I'm super glad to see you too, Sid. Where is Stinky?"

"The slammer." Sid grinned.

"Wh-what? What happened?" Arnold couldn't hide his shock.

"Ah, I'm just fucking with ya. But you sure bought it easy enough! Show's what you think of us after all these years huh?" Sid's grin was wide. Arnold always appreciated his friend's unique sense of style and jocularity. Sid was a kidder, and it gladdened Arnold to see that hadn't faded. "He's inside, trying to get into some twiggy girl's skirt." Sid brought the hand-rolled cigarette to his mouth, lighting it casually. "Say, you need to party? Everything I got's on the house for my man The Returner tonight. Sid's special stocks are wide open for Arnold Shortman, the Man of the Hour."

Arnold felt uncomfortable. It wasn't that he was against people using recreational drugs of their own free will; he had just spent a long time seeing the harmful effects of the trafficking of said substances. You looked at a joint differently when you had seen first hand a little girl harvesting the plant used to roll it at gunpoint.

"Nah, thanks though. I pregamed," Arnold lied. That was another thing he'd picked up in his ten year absence; a sense of subtlety and the tools to put it to use.

"You just find me outside if you change your mind," Sid grinned, shaking Arnold's hand again. "You better get inside though, it'd be way uncool of you to keep her waiting."

"Her? Who do you mean?" Arnold had a feeling whom Sid had meant, but played the fool for her benefit. He still didn't know how people regarded her about this topic; Helga never told him anything.

"C'mon man," Sid tilted his head knowingly. "Just get inside."

Arnold nodded, smiling and offering awkward pleasantries to the circle of people around Sid that had watched their reunion with silence. He had no idea who any of them were, but it was obvious to him that every single one of them knew of him.

Squeezing past two girls holding hands in the doorway, Arnold stepped into the stale warmth and smoky haze of the party, the smell of beer and marijuana immediately clinging to his senses like an August heat wave. He'd never been inside a party of this size before, having mostly been to tribal celebrations and a few quinceaneras with far fewer people crowding the spaces within. He spotted the beer line, a big guy in a letter jacket pumping the keg and pouring drinks into red plastic Solo cups, which were snatched up as soon as he could get them out on the table. Another line snaked and roped through the house, leading to what he saw was the downstairs bathrooms under the stairs leading to the second floor. A third line wove up the stairs, leading beyond where he could see, but he imagined it was to the private rooms where people could sequester themselves.

In the far corner of the living room, he spotted Brainy behind the unearthly blue glow of a MacBook and a wide spread of DJ turntables and sound mixers, large sound-canceling headphones pressed to one ear, his head bobbing to the complex beat he was mixing and that thrummed in the air around Arnold like a heartbeat.

Brainy glanced up from his music, making eye contact with Arnold for half a beat. The look was brief, but it was enough to tell Arnold everything he needed to know about Brainy and Helga. Jealousy has a lot of ways it manifests, and the lemon look Brainy painted on his face said in one instant that Arnold was not welcome in Brian's world. Arnold couldn't blame him.

Arnold moved towards the stage where Brainy was suddenly mixing in "_Hit the Road Jack_" by Ray Charles into the pounding house rhythm. The message wasn't lost on him, but Arnold wanted to get a better look and to size up his rival - if he is a rival, Arnold wondered - and say hello. Even Brainy deserved a greeting after so many years, though it promised to be awkward with the music so clearly expressing how the tall, wraithlike boy felt about the possible reunion.

"Just a minute, Shortman," a soft, feminine voice purred in his ear up close, a slender hand slinking around his arm. "Don't you _dare_ slip by without saying hello to Rhonda Wellington Lloyd."

Arnold turned to see Rhonda, her tall and slender form pressed up tight against his shoulders. She held his arm with two thin hands, the nails painted black and tipped in red, a silvery bangle hanging loose and large from a small wrist. She was wearing a dusky red dress, just as Arnold always pictured her, but poured into it with a taught and slinky body Arnold hadn't ever imagined. Her sharp, nearly flawless bob curled up and in under her chin, framing her heart shaped face and drawing attention to the thin red line of a feline smile on her strikingly pretty features. Arnold had to force himself to take a breath; she was stunningly beautiful, and immaculately styled and groomed to match.

"Give us a kiss for old time's sake?" She purred, leaning up to whisper the request into his ear. His face felt hot, and he turned his face to oblige, offering a quick friendly peck on the cheek.

"Rhonda, you look amazing." He sincerely meant it. Arnold had always liked Rhonda, even if she was shallow and stuck up, because he'd always seen the side of her that needed validation and attention just as much as Helga did. Rhonda's difference was in that she gathered friends up around her like weapons against loneliness, and ruled over them with her good looks and wealth, charming them with wit and cowing them with the fear of her harpy tongue. Even still, he had always seen a nice girl under all of that glitz and glamour.

The creature poured against him, touching his chest and smiling, was someone quite familiar and yet altogether strange.

"Thanks, darling, but I'm sure I'm a total _fright_ in this _dreadful_ heat. But look at you, you're all grown up." She squeezed a hard bicep for emphasis. "_Very_ nice, I approve as a naturally born gifted connoisseur on everything male. Have you been here long?" She started to lead him through the party towards the back of the house. Away from Brainy, who he cast one last look at.

Brainy had watched the whole interaction, and just watched Arnold go.

"I just got here. I saw Sid outside-" Arnold began.

"Ugh, Sid, that little _cretin_." Rhonda scowled. "He's shaking down everyone that comes in for party favors, and making a small fortune I'd wager. No respect for decorum at _all_, that _wretch_. I'll have to remember that the next time he booty calls me."

"Sid booty calls you?" Arnold couldn't hide the surprise in his voice.

"He _tries_ to, the vicious little_ troglodyte_." Rhonda smiled sweetly up at him, pulling him through a doorway past a couple grinding in front of the amps, and into the kitchen. About a dozen people mingled in the large room, some pooled around a game of beer pong around the kitchen island, a few others raiding the open fridge for anything of interest. Rhonda pushed Arnold back against one of the walls, letting her hand trail on his torso. "You just sit tight right here. I'll fetch Gerald straight away. No use having you blunder about like a lost little orphan all night-oops, my sincerest apologies, Arnold, forgive the clumsy choice of words." She smiled playfully, tapping her head with a small fist as if she'd forgotten that up until they were ten, he had been an orphan.

_Has she always been this calculated?_ Arnold just stood where she planted him, embarrassed, her lingering eye contact making him self-conscious. Her almond shaped mahogany brown eyes seemed to be looking for something in his gaze.

"Have you seen her yet, Arnold?" Her voice had changed tone. It sounded almost sad.

"We ran into each other earlier this week, my first day back." Arnold didn't even try to feign ignorance now. He knew Rhonda well enough to know she was just well connected as Gerald, if not more. He knew she meant Helga.

"Not yet tonight, though? Be alert, Arnold," she started cautiously. "Something's woke our dear Helga up. Or I should say _someone_. The lioness has teeth again. I just had a _delightful tete-a-tete_ with her and I could swear I was seeing a ghost."

Arnold felt the confusion twisting on his face. He couldn't imagine a Helga without the vicious teeth of her youth. Even if she had been subdued and deflated when they last met, he had thought he could see that fire inside her still lit and tended. "What does that mean?"

"Up until about two hours ago, Helga Pataki was a big dog with a big bark and no bite since practically forever and a day. Since the day you left, _actually_. Outside of a few noteworthy feminist outbursts-I believe she knocked someone poor grabby-handed mandchild's teeth out last fall?-our little Helga G. Pataki has practically been a _pussycat_. I've felt so bad for her that I even rigged prom so she'd win Queen. It's been so privately _sad_. Nobody likes knowing the tiger at the zoo is declawed; it spoils the adventure."

Arnold stared to the side, his eyes falling on the middle distance while he considered this unwelcome, unpleasant news. He didn't like to imagine Helga as anything less than what he remembered her. It not only spoiled the adventure, it frightened him. What else died down in her passionate heart, if her fury had been thus dimmed?

Because like Helga, Arnold had changed. Through a decade of constant struggle against the worst in people, the brilliant beacon of goodness within Arnold that guided him and shined on the best in people and reflected their best potential back to them and brought them the gift of self reflection and kindness had dimmed and cooled to small and carefully tended embers of hope. Arnold had the unfortunate privilege of a prematurely adult perspective from a young age once he reunited with his parents. Exposure to the grandiose, nearly operatic efforts people of enormous privilege and wealth went to utterly annihilate those unfortunate souls that were the least of all humanity soured the brilliant hope within him. Arnold still wished for the best in people, and he worked tirelessly to help them realize this potential as part of his life's ambition; but reality had checked the rampant and unwieldy naivete of his youth, sculpting it into a pragmatic, cautious optimism.

If so much had changed within his heart, Arnold feared, who's to say that everything he loved about Helga wasn't lost as well? Who's to say that her words at the cafe weren't utterly truthful? Stupid, blind hope and a stubborn belief in magic and fairy tales buoyed his affections despite that fatefully chilly meeting; tonight, he aimed to conclusively and utterly squeeze the conclusion to a potentially misspent youth and settle the matter of his heart once and for all. He owed it to Lila. He owed it to Helga. He owed it to himself.

"Rhonda, I'm still in love with-" Arnold began. He had to tell her, he had to tell someone.

"Ah! Ah, no no! No, shush. Shush, _shhhhh_." Rhonda put her fingers on his mouth, shutting him up. "I don't want to hear you say whatever it is you were foolishly and prematurely thinking about saying. I've always thought that you were a great man, and they are few and far between. Don't spoil my night by shattering that heroic image by attempting some clumsy _confession_ of your truest undying love for_ me_."

Rhonda smiled kindly at him, releasing his mouth from her touch. Arnold felt embarrassed, recognizing that Rhonda had just saved him from telling the most nosey and most powerful gossip in Hillwood who of the two girls in his life he intended to choose. There was that kindness in her, shielding Arnold from her even as she accepted the truth of her own character.

"Just keep in mind," she continued, "you're going to see an experience a panoply of remarkable circumstances tonight. This is just the beginning. Everybody here is glad you're back, and everything has been done for you."

Arnold blinked, unsure what to make of that awkward admission.

Rhonda had the unlikely beneficence in her to tell him precisely what to make of it. "So just keep in mind, we all love you _very_ much, Arnold Shortman. Some of us more than _others_." With that, she leaned up on the toes of her black flats to press a lingering, tender kiss to his mouth, smiling against his confused and automatically pursed lips. She dropped from her tiptoes shyly, and flashed him one of her more cunning and defiant grins.

"I always wanted to try that," she laughed with a conqueror's joy, and swayed out of the kitchen with lingering eye contact until she was out of view. Arnold was left wondering what other surprises were in store for him, his lips tingling with the sticky taste of cinnamon lip gloss.

* * *

Arnold stepped out into the lightly misting rain, the coffee shop door closing behind him with the tiny jingle of the bell hung above the doorway. Engrossing anger overwhelmed him, frustration and confusion hoarding the lion's share of his emotive balance, squashing the calm he was desperately attempting to gather in the relatively fresher air.

_What the fuck is going on_, he struggled inwardly. Helga was stonewalling him. She wasn't just acting put out to be seeing him, she was doing the best she could, by his estimation, to be outright hurtful. _What in the hell happened to her in ten years?_

Seeing her had been a shock. It didn't help that she had literally barrelled into him, the surprising strength and weight of her momentum knocking him right off his feet. The Amazon River had less luck toppling him in the past. But the physical sight of her, an adult beyond the scope of his imagination to anticipate, had sent him into an unexpected shock. Luckily for Arnold, the place his mind went when he couldn't think was friendliness and kindness; to Helga, he had hoped, he just seemed excited rather than dead nervous.

She was _beautiful_. Not in the way you'd see in glossy magazines or movie screens, Arnold thought, but in a vivid way, an expressive way, like the brush strokes of Van Gogh, making bold, powerful shapes of color to fleetingly express the weight of beauty in a single moment. Arnold was captivated by her, not because she didn't match up to his imagination, but precisely because she exceeded it in every capacity.

Her eyebrows-plural, now, he noticed-were still large, bold, and nearly pitch black in stark contrast to her early morning sunlight hued hair. He marveled at the expressive quality her powerful eyebrows possessed, quivering and curling like emphatic punctuation around the story of her eyes. Her eyes, he noticed, were still large and round and emotive, crystal blue and now lined with the oddly mature colors of adult makeup. Her long hair, really long compared to his memories, fell around her shoulders and down to her hips unencumbered by the bow he couldn't fathom seeing her without. Her lips, which had always seemed slightly large on her young face and had given her a pouting expression and a slight frown when they were kids, now seemed plush. Plump. Kissable.

He had _stared_. Easily more than he had gawked at Lila when she came to visit. The physical transformation in Helga was remarkable, because even though she had grown into her features, her round nose and her slightly too-large ears no longer as awkward on a pre-teen face, she was still Helga.

And now she was alone in the coffee shop, hopefully chewing on his suggestion. Hopefully finding the truth inside herself that she needed to say. Hopefully, Arnold wished, about to end this nightmare.

He needed to talk to someone. _Gerald just got off the phone with me a half hour ago, he's no good._ Arnold pulled his phone from his pocket, dialing one of the only people that knew the whole story, and who had remained stubbornly unbiased through the whole affair.

"Bueno?" Stella picked up the line, automatically answering her son in Spanish. When he started living with them, traveling between indigenous territories in South and Central America, Arnold had learned that his mother was a brilliant teacher, but a strict instructor. She spoke only Spanish to him for a full year before he became fluent, finally easing off and having English conversations with him on special days. It had frustrated him terribly at first, the young boy merely wishing to talk to his mother in a language that he understood, merely wishing he could tell her everything he had always wanted to say but couldn't; it wasn't until he was seamlessly switching between the two languages with her, effortlessly communicating ideas and concepts with a creative flair he'd never had before that he understood the reason she had so rigidly pushed him. Arnold was close enough to his mother that no secret was sacred between them; no topics were taboo. She had given him his first beer on his 18th birthday, and given him advice when his first girlfriend in Bolivia had told him he wasn't very good at kissing. Arnold trusted his mother with everything, precisely because he could communicate with her in any medium that was necessary.

He very badly needed that connection now, when Helga had ripped the foundation of his fantasies out from under him.

"Mom, it's not going well," He began in Spanish. He would speak in that passionate language for this, needing the specific cultural concepts it could express. "Helga is the bull at the gate."

"Oh Arnold. You knew that the dreams of your past would be difficult to find in your present." Stella sighed for her son, the affectionate and disappointed sound making her seem so close to Arnold.

"I want to see the fire in her heart. But Helga is an icy wall; I will never get the truth of her feelings when she holds herself in locks and chains." Arnold found the poetic expression he fell to with his mother in this conversation to be oddly apt. Helga's poetry sprang to mind, and it filled him with painful nostalgia. "If there's no open door for me here, I have to close it for Lila."

"Lila knows you are in HIllwood, and the smart girl knows why. Don't lie to yourself for Lila when Lila has only shown you truth." Stella cut to the heart of it, always a blunt and candid presence in Arnold's life.

"If I can't get through to Helga, the only choice is to return home. To San Lorenzo." Bitter frustration welled in his voice. This wasn't how he wanted it to be when he had finally come back. Nothing was like he imagined.

"My _beautiful_ son, so bright like the sun and yet so dim. Don't let the memory of your past spoil the adventure of returning home to Hillwood. Phil and Gertie are there, and they've missed you very much. Your true friend Gerald has written you faithfully for many years. There's so much for you there. Not just Helga. Helga is difficult. She never wrote you a letter, not really, and I think I know why, but she has to express it for herself. The trouble with Helga is that she can express herself so beautifully to everyone but the one she loves. Maybe she still loves you. Maybe you still love her. Maybe you love Lila. The gift you have is that in your present, there is only_ possibility_. Open your gift when it's ready. Don't be scared of what is inside before you've opened the box."

Arnold listened to his mother pour out all the words he had needed, her beautiful Spanish curling around the poetry of her expert advice. He knew she was right; he was pushing things too fast. Helga took seven years to tell him how she felt the first time; if she still felt something-and he very much needed to know if she did-it wouldn't come spilling out of her beautifully the instant she saw him.

"You're right. I'll give her time. I can be her friend for now, or forever if she wishes it. I've waited so long for the truth, a little longer is nothing to me."

"You're such a good man, Arnold. Helga and Lila are lucky you have enough love to shine for them both. Just don't keep either of them waiting for long." Stella still didn't know about the engagement, he was fairly certain. Stella wouldn't be giving him advice as if there was still a choice to be made if she did know. Stella was one for keeping your promises.

"Thanks mom. I better get back to Helga. She's expecting me to come back in, and I'll hear her confession or else reassure her with patience."

"Good boy. Tell me how it goes later. Your father says hello."

"Love you mom," Arnold said, closing the conversation in English. Putting the phone in his pocket, he pulled out a scrap of paper, the receipt from his taxi. Just in case she tries to close this chapter up prematurely, he thought, jotting down the date he and Lila had decided that they would be married, barring any changes in Hillwood.

"_Christmas Day, we say goodbye_." He stared at the note, feeling awkwardly melodramatic when he read it back to himself. But, if she closed herself off fully, really giving him the firm "no" he was afraid of, he'd have to say goodbye for himself and for Lila.

He swallowed the gnawing, nagging guilt that always boiled within his guts when he considered for too long that he was playing with Lila's feelings, an ugly truth that he struggled with every step forward he took in Hillwood. She deserves better, he thought, even as he followed it up with, I deserve to know the truth.

One way or the other, he would have his answer, stepping back into the coffee shop after gathering his courage and locking eyes with a very sad looking, very frightened blonde girl from his memory that struggled and refused the meaning of his return.

* * *

"HEY, AW~NOLD" A deep, raspy voice nasally shocked Arnold from the nervous, anticipatory haze his mind had settled into in the kitchen. He glanced around, looking for a familiar face from the voice he could almost recognize.

His gaze settled on Harold, although he almost hadn't recognized him at first.

A dirty-looking, metal-studded street kid dressed in torn, patched, and filth-crusted denim sneered back at him, looking like he was squeezed into his clothes like cheap sausage and smelling like he'd spent the night under a car. His short denim cap, rimmed with rusting-out metal studs and festooned with badges and patches of symbols Arnold couldn't possibly recognize, sat right where the Jewish boy's blue baseball cap had always been, bill turned up to expose a massive unkempt unibrow pierced in six places. A scruffy, salt-and-pepper beard blossomed from the tanned and grinning face, emerging from a thick neck with every available inch of surface area blackened with bold tattoos. A denim vest, squeezing his arms and chest into pronounced shape, boldly displayed Satanic and Anarchist imagery, painted and sewn and stitched on, flying the colors of a Punk for all to see.

"What's UP Shortman, you skinny piece of shit!" Harold pounced, tackling Arnold into the wall with a powerful bear hug. The sour, earthy smell of him poured into Arnold's nose, almost watering his eyes. Arnold struggled to get an arm free, unsure if he was surprised, disgusted, or laughing. He heard himself laughing.

"HAROLD oh my god let go-Harold, _dammit_! Harold you smell like a chain smoking horse butthole!" Arnold got out between breaths, his finally freed arm pounding on the muscular boy's back.

Harold released him with a yellow grin, punching Arnold straight on the arm with a painful thud.

"Aw, I'm sorry Arnold. Too much of a pussy to get _hugged_? What, does your mommy wave her arms at you when she tucks you in for beddie-bye, afraid she might _bruuuuise_ you?" Harold sarcastically blinked his eyes at Arnold. He couldn't believe how little Harold had changed, outside of being a physical ordeal to experience.

"What happened to you, uh, I mean, you look so _different_." Arnold tried to hold back the distaste he had for the change in the boy. He wasn't sure that Harold missed it.

"Aw me and Patty just said the big 'Fuck You!' to our parents, been livin' free together finally after all these years."

"Wow. Patty too?"

"Yeah! It's great, she's great. Baddest bitch in Hillwood, she's messed me up so many times, oh man, she's so strong and so ruthless and so punk. She's the most punk bitch in Hillwood, Arnold, it's great! Oh man, she's so great."

_This guy's still an idiot_, Arnold realized. _But his heart's still in the right place_. Even if Harold was arguably worse to be around, and throwing around gendered slurs about his apparent girlfriend, Arnold still felt the obvious love and affection and warmth radiating from Harold. Maybe he had changed.

"ANYway, me and Patty are gonna blow this lame party soon, after the big show I mean. Helga's shitty band will probably fuck everything up, oh man, it's going to be hilarious! Ahahahaha!" Harold's cackle grated on Arnold. _Helga's band?_ Arnold didn't know about that.

"What do you mean, Helga's band? Is Helga in a band? Are they playing tonight?"

"Oops! Sorry, Arnold, I spoiled the surprise! Oh well, it was a dumb surprise anyway, like anyone'd be impressed with dumb Helga's shitty love songs! It's so not Punk!"

_Love songs?_ Arnold felt a buzzing in his blood, an electric galvanism that threatened to animate his body into alien and impossible configurations; his skin leapt with excitement. _Are they about me?_

Instantly Arnold recognized the ego in his question. How small of him, he felt, to assume that Helga was only capable of feeling affection for him. Helga was enormous. Within her oceans there were depths he could never fathom. It was a puny assumption on his behalf that everything was bent towards him.

"Is Patty here?" Arnold needed to change topics. Letting his thoughts linger in the unwelcome garden of uncertain romances brought squirming anxiety to his guts.

"Yeah! She's totally hammered!" Harold cackled with glee, proud of Patty in a way that Arnold couldn't understand, but could recognize just the same. "You wanna come see her?"

"Yeah, I'd like that." Arnold was ready to proactively try to find more of his friends. Harold was just the foul smelling beacon he needed to call out to the rest of PS118, summoning their scattered attentions.

Harold shouldered through a group of preppy looking kids, cruelly forcing his bulk physically through them. "ExCUSE me, got a V.I.P. coming through! And Arnold's here too!" Harold's obnoxious nasal cackle followed his bad joke. Somehow, it made Arnold nostalgic to hear that braying laugh again.

Arnold followed his old friend, apologetically smiling to the half dozen or so strangers Harold had managed to offend in an instant. Harold was leading him outside to the back yard, he realized, where the crowd fanned out and clustered into familiar groups. Three speakers as tall as him stood on the small concrete porch, pumping out a funky groove of Poolside and Burial that Brainy was mixing together into a cooled down, slower tempo writhe in the buzzing air of celebration.

Arnold was shoved against the wall almost as soon as he left the building, pushed back and up into the brick of the doorway by two people in the frenzy of what seemed to be a fistfight. Arnold threw his hands up in loosely held fists in front of his face, curling his shoulders over to protect his torso automatically. Six years of boxing in South American gyms had given him rudimentary instincts in self defense that served him well when a large fist haphazardly thudded against his bicep, immediately numbing the entire limb.

"WHOA watch it, you stinking cow!" A familiar voice screeched in surprise, a skinny figure in what appeared to be an extremely fine charcoal gray suit with shiny black hair and designer-looking sunglasses pressed against him. Arnold sucked in a breath of surprise as another fist from the aggressor collided with his shoulder from the other side of the well dressed victim pressed against him.

"CURLY?!" Arnold growled in surprise, looking over Curly's shoulder to see the short flame red Mohawk and row of spiked hair atop the tall figure of the tattered-clothing clad girl drunkenly throwing hands.

"P-patty! Patty stop, it's Arnold, I'm _behind_ Curly!" Arnold cried out in surprise and shock, the crowd of people gathered in excited attention around the sorry excuse for a fistfight. Really, to the gathered gawkers, it was just a big street girl pounding on some rich boy while a tan-looking kid in a pink flannel shirt got caught in the mess.

Arnold shoved Curly off of him with a grunt, sending the awkward boy bowling into Patty, who fell back and against the meaty wall of Harold. Arnold steadied himself, watching Patty's bare brows-totally devoid of any hair at all, and dotted with fierce looking metal studs-lift high when she looked at Harold with something that looked like adoration in her eyes. "Oh heeey, baby." She slurred. "Come to help me knock heads, my little dumpster Casanova?" Patty's strong looking hand, ringed with metal and leather bangles, caressed Harold's dirty beard affectionately.

"Yeah, babe! Who's the suit?" Harold seemed to completely disregard that up until a second ago, Patty had been wailing in Arnold in an attempt to pound Curly.

"The _suit_, you pathetically destitute street_ trash_, is Thaddeus Gammelthorpe, and I could sue your porcine_ grandchildren_ for this!" Arnold brushed his chest off while Curly lectured the two punks who seemed wrapped around each other, totally unaware of Curly's outrage. "Hey! Listen to me! I buy and sell companies with payrolls larger than this entire_ party_ on the day to day!"

Arnold regarded Curly with an instant level of understanding and disgust. "I don't think they care how rich you've gotten, Curly," he blithely explained.

"Oh, hello, Arnold. Thank you for cushioning my fall. And for taking those hits for me. You always had a keen eye for justice. Glad to see that your innate altruism has blossomed into protecting the weak like a proper man." Curly's voice dripped with pretension and an audible note of disgust for everything around him.

"Yeah, great Curly, but let's let Sid and Nancy over here breed next to the speakers and get some space. I have questions to ask you." Arnold got some distance from Patty and Harold, watching Harold's thick hand feel up her fishnets and tiny jean shorts from the corner of his eye. _I guess they grew up a little._

Curly and Arnold settled for standing underneath a large, drooping oak that was wrapped from root to leaf in festive christmas lights. Arnold rubbed the spot on his arm where Patty had slugged him, still feeling the intent to seriously injure or maim in the ghostly throbbing of the impact.

"Wanna tell me why Patty started throwing punches, Curly?"

"Thaddeus, actually. And as I'm fortunate enough to not be a zookeeper, how am I supposed to anticipate the juvenile outbursts of a beast like that?" Curly was inspecting the jacket of his finely tailored suit. Arnold's eye caught a glimpse of the designer label on the inside of his lapel when Curly bent over. _Michael Kors._ _This piece of shit came to a frat party in a three thousand dollar suit. Come on._

"Sorry, Thaddeus, but do you think it had anything to do with throwing comments around like 'I buy and sell companies daily?' Something tells me Patty's not exactly a receptive audience to that sort of thing." Annoyance in his voice, Arnold tried to figure out what in the hell happened to Curly. Harold made sense, and so did Patty, in the same way that Harold did. Arnold needed to puzzle out the strange destiny of the boy he used to know as Curly.

"If you must know, that hell-weaned high school dropout was exercising what few brain cells devoted to memory I'm sure she has_ left_ to intentionally antagonize me. Big surprise, she was only just about the most miserable example of humanity in high school, a very paragon for failure and bitter futility."

"Yeah but what happened?" Arnold was losing patience with Thaddeus quickly.

"She had the audacious gall to bring up my nervous breakdown, you nosey _prat_. I wasn't about to let that slide anymore; I am a _Wolf!_ I don't leave challenges to my self-made success and superiority go unchallenged. I cut her down immediately, reminding her how she slept on a city-hall spiked sidewalk last Christmas Eve while I slept soundly with my face between the right and left breasts of a supermodel whose name I didn't even bother to learn._ That's_ what happened, and then you collided with me, nearly dislocating my shoulder, and then that blood-soaked she-beast starts swinging. You're all a sorry lot of buccaneers and hooligans, and Hell take you all!" Thaddeus's voice raised in pitch higher and higher the more he progressed, and Arnold became more and more infuriated the further the disgusting tale was told. By the end, Arnold felt like punching Thaddeus himself.

_But what is that about a nervous breakdown?_ "I heard you're in New York. Wall Street?" Arnold took a guess, based on the suit and Thaddeus' remarkably myopic attitude.

"For once, you seem keenly observant, Arnold. I'd buy you a cookie, but bakeries usually can't break a hundred."

Everything made sense now. Curly had always been off, but Arnold had attributed his hyperactivity and childish psychosis to attention-starved thrill seeking behavior. A boy that thrived on negative attention, similarly to Helga, but who also seemed to lack the basic empathic need to be connected to someone in the way she did. It made sense that his highly unstable, grandiose exaggeration of a personality would translate especially well to the sociopathic world of hedge fund management, speculative trading, and hostile acquisitions of Wall Street.

Arnold had seen enough. Curly-_Thaddeus_, he reminded himself-was a problem too beyond his caring at the moment. He had other, blonder, more attractive fish to fry.

"Keep your cookie, Thaddeus. You might wanna just head home early tonight. I think you're done here."

"Nice try, Romeo, but I won't step a foot towards sanctuary until_ she_ acknowledges me." Thaddeus' eyes narrowed behind his narrow frame glasses.

"Rhonda?"

"Wellington Lloyd," Thaddeus finished. "The one and only. I didn't drag my expensively manicured ass all the way back to this sorry _slum_ just to have her cold shoulder me all night. A courteous _hello_ would be peaches and cream."

_Again with the dessert references. I wish I had read more Freud._ Arnold regarded Thaddeus carefully. Somehow, somewhere in that vicious, baked-goods focused shell of a man was the boy he remembered. Even if he was buried deep beneath expensive clothes and a career in callous evil, Curly still wanted attention from the one person who was virtually guaranteed to never offer it up.

"I think if you want to get Rhonda's attention, you're going to have to drop the act, Curly."

"Act? Arnold, who exactly do you think you are?" Thaddeus sneered at Arnold, an ugly expression on his sour face.

"I'm just saying, the odds that Rhonda will respond positively to you go up exponentially if you don't act like such a stuck up horse's ass." Arnold didn't mind being candid with Curly. Curly clearly didn't mind being candid with him.

"Wake up call, Shortman. You've been gone for ten years. Not just any ten years, but all the important ones. You have _no idea_ who I am, you don't know anything about me or what's happened to me or where I've been. You think you can just march up to me like when we were kids and set me straight? There's nothing to_ straighten out_. I'm Thaddeus Maplethorpe, young and rich and powerful, and I don't answer to you or Rhonda. You insult and belittle me with your false concern and prettily painted up advice. Go moon over Helga like we all know you're here to do, and get out of my life."

_Stubborn prick_. Arnold couldn't decide if he had the patience to set Thaddeus straight, help him see the gross and insidious way he'd chosen to live his life, or if he should just write the whole situation off and go back to the kitchen to wait for Rhonda and Gerald.

The old, younger Arnold would have opted to try to help. The newer, older Arnold didn't have the patience.

"Alright, Thaddeus. I don't mind leaving you to your money or your misery. I'm headed back to the kitchen to wait for Rhonda and Gerald. You enjoy whatever it is you enjoy, and have a nice life. I certainly won't be in it any more." Arnold walked away, just barely catching the sad, disappointed look on Curly's face as he pushed past Harold and Patty, now thoroughly entwined in a passionate, extremely public dry hump, and disappeared back into the crowded kitchen.

* * *

Arnold sighed patiently, trying not to sound so tired to the sweet girl on the other line. Lila was silent. She's heard the exasperation, but chose not to comment on it.

"Look, Lila, I'm just going to a party with all our old friends, and it's just going to be a nice night. There's nothing to worry about." Lies in his mouth, spoken to Lila, tasted like old stale citrus.

"You say these things to try to console me, in your ever so sweet way, but I'm not naive and I'm not stupid. Arnold, there's going to be a lot of pent up emotion at the party - I just want you to be extra careful."

"I'm sure everything will be just fine." Arnold had been telling himself that every moment since his fateful chat with Helga days before. He almost believed it.

"I'm ever so hopeful you're right. Are we going to talk about Helga at all?" Arnold winced. Helga was the one topic he didn't ever want to discuss with Lila.

A long pause while he tried to calibrate what he wanted to day was filled with the ambient sounds of street symphonies of traffic and humanity outside his boarding house window.

"I just don't know what there is to discuss anymore."

"Well we can talk about how I've got your ring on my finger, but she's still on your mind. An awful lot. She's why you're there. It is uncomfortable for you to talk about, but I know there are a lot of ever so confusing unresolved issues from your past with her. I'm here though, I can talk to you. You can talk to me, even about her."

Arnold wasn't so sure, and also intensely uncomfortable. He deeply cared about LIla. He loved her, powerfully, and was fiercely loyal to their history and to her bright and impossible-to-defeat spirit. Where Helga had written him but a single letter of pithy, forgettable content, LIla and Arnold had become pen pals of legendary frequency and intimacy. Hundreds of thousands of words had been exchanged between them over the years: confessions of fears, loves, dreams, and ambitions; detailed accounts of their daily lives; meaningless small talk of the local weather exchanged like two old men in Central Park; and finally, once things became serious, heartfelt words of affection and tenderness, slowly built into Lila's roaring devoted passion and Arnolds quiet supportive doting. Arnold and Lila knew each other perhaps better than Arnold and Gerald, and their bond had grown to become something resembling siblings, in Arnold's eyes, yet something more that mixed into the confusing territory of lovers.

The untimely and sudden death of her parents at her farm home had shattered the bubble Lila had been living in. At Arnold's suggestion, she came to visit him. And that's when the accident happened. And that's when he promised her to always be by her side. The ring had been a formality; already in his heart Lila was married to a piece of his soul, and would remain buried there always.

Even if Helga had been buried there first, deeper and more profoundly.

"It just hurts to talk about, Lila. I don't like making you upset. And besides, I already talked to Helga and _nothing happened_."

"Oh but I recognize that tone, Arnold. You're ever so upset and conflicted that nothing happened. If I heard relief, I'd say 'come home to me, hurry,' but all I hear is hesitation at an open door. But it's okay, I understand, Arnold. She's a very big part of you. She represents everything you miss about your life in Hillwood, but she's also someone you miss very much. It's okay. You have every right to get closure. I trust you to behave like the perfectly oh-so gallant gentleman you are. But I don't think I trust Helga very much, I'm sorry to say."

Arnold was not convinced there was anything to worry about for Lila. Nothing in what he had experienced in the last ten years matched up to the childlike fantasies he'd entertained in lonely nights, on hot days, or even in the middle of conversations. Helga vibrated inside him with an energetic harmonics that was troublesome for its persistence. Once he had figured out how he felt, and had accepted what she was to him, there wasn't anything he could do but love her. But now, he was nervous and sick to say, it seemed to have all been a fantasy built on ghosts and shadows and smoke. What did he have left, except a closed chapter in his life he needed to discard, and move forward with Lila?

For one, he had the nagging persistent doubt that Helga had not been telling the truth. He knew it wasn't Helga's actions that had hurt and haunted him so thoroughly since his fateful return, it was his brain's stubborn reaction against it.

"Helga won't do anything, Lila. Helga had ten years to do something. She had the coffee shop to do something. She's had days since to do something. It's over. After the party, I'll help settle the affairs at the boardinghouse like I planned and come to the farm. We'll talk about what comes next then, and get ready for Christmas. Together."

Lila sighed longingly. "You know I love you very much."

"I know. Thank you," Arnold quietly replied, staring up at the dusk sky streaking reds and oranges across a deepening blanket of purple overhead through his old room's skylight.

"Just try to have fun, but be ever so cautious. For my peace of mind at least."

"You keep saying be cautious, and I keep telling you that there's nothing to worry about." Arnold snapped, getting exhausted of this circling conversation.

"Arnold, there's no need to get cross." Lila's voice was remarkably stern. "I'm partially paralyzed, not made of glass. If you don't stop tiptoeing around me, I shall go absolutely bonkers. Be honest with me, Arnold, please."

"Alright, fine," he huffed. He couldn't identify why she was making him so frustrated. It was an itchy thing, a wiggling feeling in his chest, where guilt usually lurked, but in this moment he felt only bitter resentment. It made him want to vomit.

"Do you intend to confront Helga again, or do you expect she will attempt to confront you?" Lila was remarkably calm when she asked the question. Something high in the way she asked him made Arnold uneasy; something was hidden in her tone, and to Arnold, it meant she was hiding something at all. It was thoroughly out of character for her.

"Maybe."

"Maybe to both?"

"Maybe." Arnold felt his jaw grinding.

"I think I would be much more comfortable if you tried to get closure as I have suggested in a much more public, less alcohol-lubricated environment. But short of growing wings and flying up there, it doesn't seem like I can do very much to stop whatever will happen." Lila sounded sad, but Arnold also heard the hint of a confirmed fear in her small voice.

"Lila, nothing will happen that you need to worry about. I keep saying that."

"Try to see it from my perspective for a second, Arnold. My _fiancé_ is going to a big party thrown in his honor where his longtime fantasy girl and boyhood crush will be, _probably drunk_, and when only days before the two of them had a painful reunion that left said fiancé with ever so many questions and suspicions that he won't _talk to me about_."

Acid anger jolted through him, and Arnold felt the tension, confusion, and anxiety about the party boil into words in his mouth, word that coiled around his tongue and teased it into motion. A surprised gasp filled his lungs with reluctant air and the panic of this immediate bolt of heated bitterness pushed those fateful words out, cruelly pinning them in the air to hang with echoing, gravity-defying audacity.

"I just don't know what I want anymore!"

Silence. Arnold heard the wind rustle something on Lila's end. She was outside, probably on her porch alone at sunset. He pictured her holding her phone to her face, looking in pain up at the hateful orange ball of the sun as it grew engorged with the last ghosts of the day and sank beneath waving, scarlet-lit fields of grain that stretched out forever in front of her. A sea of bitter magenta that mocked her with every beauty she couldn't appreciate for the words he had let loose from their awful cage.

Arnold's phone lit up with a notification against his face. He turned the screen to look at it, the call still proceeding in grim silence as he checked the text he had just got. It was a number he didn't recognize.

A square picture-probably Instagram filters, Arnold recognized-filled the messages window in a text from a stranger. In sepia tones, a pink shoebox with what looked like "_Important_" written on the side, the top open. Empty. A pink ribbon rolled up next to it.

It was from Helga. The hot sick feeling in his chest he got when he realized that alarmed him.

Arnold closed his messages app hastily and brought the phone to his face. Lila still hadn't said a word. He had to fix this, no matter how much it hurt them. There wasn't any other honest way to face what needed to be faced. Anything else would be callous, treacherous.

"Lila," he began hesitantly. That picture confused him. He couldn't divine the meaning, but he knew it was significant. She was trying to tell him something about the party he was going to be at in a few hours.

"Yes, Arnold?" Lila finally answered him, taking nearly as long to respond as he had taken to speak first.

"I don't know what I want anymore. You should take that ring off your finger until I figure it out. It's not fair to either of us that it's there while this is going on. I will find out. That much I know. I can't promise anything to anyone anymore, I just can't. We're in frontier. But I will keep the first promise I made to you, no matter what happens. I will _always_ be by your side, no matter what happens at this party or the next party or anything else in life."

Emotion choked Lila when she pushed his name through her lips. "_Arnold._"

"I'm sorry, Lila. We both know I'm right."

"Arnold, _please,_ wait." She was choking back a lump in her throat, her voice cracking.

"I love you very much. I always will. I'll be able to tell you if that means I can be your husband soon. Someday, soon." Arnold held back the feelings of panic and uncertainty. He had to do this. The feeling he got when he saw Helga's picture confirmed the worst for him.

"_Arnold_." All Lila could do was say his name. Arnold felt his eyes sting with guilty, angry tears. He hated that he had put himself in this awful position with his stupid reckless need to fix everyone broken. He had done this. He had to fix it. He had one more thing to fix before he could be with anyone. Before he could be himself again. His life had been on hold for ten years because of this mess, and he needed an empty slate to put an ending to the story once and for all.

"I love you Lila, but we're broken up. I'll call you tomorrow morning. I love you, I love you, I love you. Lila Sawyer, I love you." It all gushed out of him, pushed from him by a sudden tsunami of memory, every happy moment he'd ever had with her, every loving letter, every fragment of joy she had given him. Ripping it out of himself was the second hardest thing he had ever done.

"Goodbye, Arnold," Lila choked out. The line went quiet. She hung up first.

Arnold set the phone on his bed and held his face in his hands.

He looked at his hands with disgust. _I'm so fucked up._

* * *

"There you are, man," Gerald rushed up to Arnold, a grin on his face. "Rhonda told me you'd be in the kitchen. Couldn't sit still for just a second could ya?" Gerald was in a red satin shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a skinny black tie clipped to the scarlet garment with a silver tie clip. He wore a white belt looped into fine black trousers. Arnold was impressed. Gerald cleaned up well.

Arnold exchanged his secret handshake with Gerald automatically, smiling back at his friend. He has no idea about Lila. Arnold knew that Gerald and Phoebe had gone to talk to Lila without telling him. Lila had told him, but didn't tell him what they talked about. That meant it was either about him and Lila, or about him and Helga.

Either way, it appeared that Lila hadn't contacted either of them since earlier. Arnold moved out of the way of someone trying to get past him, stepping closer to Gerald and taking the opportunity to whisper conspiratorially.

"So where's Helga? I'm tired of bumping around all these strangers. I wanna get this over with"

"Get what over with, my man? The party? No way, man, I put this shit together in your honor. Not about to end the night before the main event." Gerald wagged his eyebrows at Arnold, his smile wide.

"Yeah but what even is the main eve-" Arnold started, before someone bumped into him hard, pushing him away from Gerald and nearly knocking him from his feet.

Arnold grunted, getting his balance and watching Gerald lift Eugene up by the hand. "Eugene!" Arnold's smile was wide, his joy genuine. "Eugene, are you alright?"

The skinny boy turned his undercut-shaved head, a curly pompadour swooped back over his ginger eyebrows. He smiled his too-wide smile, a dappling of freckles crinkling up in his nose and cheeks. "Arnold! I'm okay!" Eugene fell into Arnold in a hug, warm and affectionate. Arnold couldn't help but notice how little he was.

Eugene pulled away, still smiling, and getting a good look at Arnold in his pink and creamsicle-colored flannel shirt with pearl snap buttons, the sleeves rolled up to expose his tanned arms. Arnold thought he saw Eugene bite his lower lip, before Eugene gasped up at him, "You look amazing. Just the same."

Eugene had come out to Arnold in a letter. Arnold had been one of the first people Eugene had told, and had been honored and touched at the gesture of confidence and kindness Eugene had paid him. He'd never forget the words Eugene wrote to him.

"_The courage you taught me as a young boy gives me the confidence to be who I am as a young man."_

Nothing had gone right for Eugene since the day he'd come out, although anyone could argue that nothing had gone right for the unfortunate young man since the day he was born. It wasn't because of any unfortunate bigotry that Eugene suffered, though. It was his blind optimism that had done him in.

Not long after Eugene had come out to his friends and family at the age of 18, he had fallen in love with the school's drama instructor. The affair was brief. Everyone knew the sad tale now, and it pained Arnold to recall the way that Eugene's name had been dragged through the mud by the man when their passionate affair came to light. Eugene, ever kind and incapable of any cruelty whatsoever, silently accepted every accusation slung his way, and watched his future at Theater School dry up and disappear.

Now he worked at the town's only magic shop, still dreaming of a day when his name didn't carry the stain any longer.

Arnold smiled with kindness at his old friend, hugging him again. "It's really great to see you again, Eugene. I really wanted to see you."

Eugene smiled up at him, shrugging his thin shoulders under a brightly colored, peacock-patterned keffiyeh that was draped over a simple cream-colored deep v-neck t-shirt. He wore slim, white and yellow plaid chino shorts, and small white flats. Arnold thought he looked like a little candle, a bright color in a dark room wherever he went.

"Gerald, has he seen Helga yet?" Eugene turned to Gerald, a curious expression on his face.

"Everybody keeps asking me that," Arnold grumbled. "I would like to see everybody else, too."

"Oh, I know, Arnold. But we're not why you're here. It's okay, everybody knows. We threw this party for you two," Eugene smiled simply, sunnily. "She's in the living room dancing. We should go watch." Something glittered in Eugene's smiling eyes.

Gerald laughed a little bit. "All right, why not? It's about damn time anyway."

Arnold looked at the two of them, who were standing expectantly before him, waiting for his decision.

"Okay. Let's go." Arnold's friends grinned at him, leading the way through the kitchen to the main room where Brainy's DJ table was set up. Where Helga was dancing.

_What is happening to me?_ Arnold couldn't recall ever feeling the intense anticipatory buzz in his head, the frantic excitement that was like a freeform jazz heartbeat. He'd never been this excited in his life. Every step behind him seemed to blend into a vague narrative, and in every instant he was aware of what piece of spacetime he occupied, without any understanding of how it was he arrived there. He simply seemed to be getting pulled towards an inexorable future by an unseen destiny. Keen awareness sharpened every detail while he floated downstream in this karmic boulevarde. Now he was stepping into the living room. Now he was turning his shoulders to squeeze between two separate groups of people, backs building barriers of their unseen bubbles. Now he was looking at Brainy, who was playing Air's "Electronic Performers" and bobbing his torso to the immaculate beat. Now he stood between Gerald and Eugene, transfixed by the ghostly spectre of every instant and moment of his past manifest in the moving, twisting shape of Helga Pataki. Now he was here. Before he was not as close to her as he was now. In his future, another step he would forget would bring him even closer. He had no idea how many it would take, or what path the impossibly-defined, ever-disappearing history of his passage would shape. He simply saw the terminal point of the journey, and there she was.

Helga didn't notice Arnold. He was grateful for the blessing, unsure how he would manage an interaction now. He knew for one thing that he finally knew what he wanted. How strange, he felt, that the mind can tell you what the heart wants, and then offer no insights in this necessary acquisition. If the mind was the heart's way of grasping needful things, then it was a blind guide, driven by unshakable ambition yet lacking the essential tools to arrive at the finish line.

Gerald nudged Arnold, a knowing grin on his face. "Take a picture, Arnold, it'll last longer." Arnold's face pinked, aware of how he was gawking without needing Gerald to point it out.

"He's just taking her all in, Gerald. Helga can be quite the performer." Eugene slipped a small hand around Arnold's bicep, pulling him forward. "Let's get a closer look."

Arnold didn't move at first, but Eugene's gentle tug put a step behind him, and then another. A dozen steps glew like beacons behind him, alighting the past where he was further away from Helga. He thought he could see the unearthly glowing response of the steps he would take before him, pulling him forward.

Eugene slipped from his side, pulling around behind him. He felt two small hands slide onto his back and rest there for a moment, before he was pushed fully forward. He looked behind him in a brief half-panic; he couldn't see Gerald or Eugene any longer. Wherever they were in the crowd, it didn't matter.

Helga Pataki was dancing right next to him. His body responded automatically, a rhythm within him lifting his limbs, placing them here and there, shaking his hips and rolling his shoulders. Somehow, Arnold found that he wasn't just dancing next to Helga, he was dancing with her. A fierce and hot blush reddened his tanned features, but he couldn't tear his gaze from Helga's closed eyes, wondering what she would do if she opened them to find the male body she was energetically dancing with was him.

He got his answer as her large blue eyes opened when his hand found itself on her hip. A spark of surprize started the flash-fire of hot anger on her face, but when their eyes met, her mouth hung open and no sound escaped. She didn't stop moving, she didn't look away. Arnold's mind was a sick riot, alarm bells and warning sirens in his imagination blaring. _Escape. Get away. She is the Death of us._

Helga bit her lower lip, and turned her face away as she kept dancing. Their bodies were close, and his hand felt like it was made of flame where it sat on her hip. He could smell her. The warmth of her body and the delicate floral scent of whatever perfume she was wearing fogged his mind. Helga is dancing with me willingly. Arnold could hardly believe the moment he was sharing with her. Only in fantasies had he shared a passionate salsa with her, chest to chest, or escaped to a New Orleans jazz club together for a night of frenzied swing. Here was the real thing, though, and she was pressing her back against his chest, her hands touching his legs tentatively. He felt the furnace of her palms trace along his hips and touch his belly. His face was fire.

The song suddenly transitioned to something much more fast paced, the beat pounding up into a staccato frenzy. Helga's head whipped around, a sloppy grin on her face that she was trying to make fierce with an angry, high arch of her eyebrows. Her hip moved, and she was no longer being touched by Arnold. She put distance between them, brought out of the spell by the sudden change in the music.

"Wh-what's the big idea, Football head? Who said you could d-dance with me?" her voice wavered, almost shaking. She had stopped dancing, and stood holding her arms, wrapping herself in their strong cage walls. Parting the two of them.

"I, uh," Arnold's throat was dry. He couldn't explain in this crowd what he was doing when he barely knew it himself. "I just saw you dancing alone and-"

"And you thought you could just jump in?" Helga shot back, her face still very red. He noticed the sparkle of makeup on her eyelids, the glisten of gloss on her pouty lips. I've never seen makeup on her before. A new surprise. Helga was full of firsts tonight. He wondered what surprises were still to come from her.

"Well...to be fair, you danced back with me." Arnold could barely think, could barely breathe. "You were practically in my lap." The words fell out of his mouth as he watched, helpless.

Helga's eyes narrowed. "It could have been _anyone_-I was just dancing, it's not like I had any fun because it was _you_." Helga's voice became sharp and clear, no hesitation.

"I...need to go back outside," came his reluctant reply. A hot cloud in his mind threatened to totally envelop him. Helga's surprise was obvious, but she didn't try to stop him.

"Fine, do whatever pleases. I have to get on stage anyway." Helga's blush faded, and she waved away the moment between them with a hand.

"Whatever you say," Arnold smiled as he repeated his familiar childhood mantra. "Helga." Somehow it caught her by surprise. He watched her stare back at him with a confused and angry and slightly disappointed look on her face. The steps behind him, closer to her. The steps before him would bring him back to her again, he knew. All of life's paths took detours now and then.

* * *

Arnold folded his arms and leaned against the tree, watching from only six feet as Brainy meticulously checked and re-checked every instrument on the outside stage in the back yard. His retreat had been fortunately timed. He'd managed to get a perfect spot to watch Helga's band play, comfortable against a tree and slightly to the left of the stage. He'd get to see Helga right up front, without any distractions.

Oddly, he couldn't see any of the rest of PS118 out in the backyard where the rest of the entire party had started to gather. He was more and more glad for his early spot grab as time progressed, because the press of people that began to collect up front would have made it impossible for him to find a decent position now.

Eugene and Sheena-_Sheena!_ Arnold smiled with surprise. _She looks vibrant in her sun dress_!-appeared on stage with Brainy, each holding a corner of a big white sheet. Sheena stood on her tiptoes, lifting the corner of the sheet into the canopy of trees above the stage, and clipped it into place. Arnold's breath held in his throat as he watched Eugene shakily climb one of the tall amps in the back, finally getting on top and clipping the sheet taut into place. The sheet now stretched from one side of the stage to the other, behind the drum kit. Eugene flashed a thumbs up towards the house, grinning, and a bright light shone on stage.

Arnold turned to see Phoebe guiding the beam of a projector on the roof of the house down towards the sheet. The light shifted and shook as she adjusted the angle, and finally shone a haunting blue on the stage, illuminating Brainy as he tuned a guitar.

_Are they all in on this?_ Arnold couldn't help but wonder what else would happen tonight. It wouldn't be unlike the kids of PS118 to work together on something like this, but it was certainly odd that it would be for Helga.

Arnold could barely hold in the shout of surprise that leapt out of his throat when Gerald stepped on stage, picking up the bass guitar and shouldering the strap calmly. Gerald, too?! Arnold gawked, watching Gerald pluck a few strings and test the tension in the neck with his strong fingers. Gerald noticed Arnold's stare, and flashed him a wink and a grin. Arnold barely registered the surprise when Stoop Kid stalked out in a sleeveless tuxedo and sat at the drum kit.

_Lila was right to be suspicious_, Arnold realized. This was planned - it reeked of one of those crazy all-or-nothing plans they used to cook up as kids. As he watched Gerald move around confidently on the stage, illuminated by the ghostly blue of the projector, he was sure without doubting that it was his best friend who had been part of this. Gerald was on stage with Helga's band; there simply wasn't any way he would consent to such a thing unless it matched up to some plan.

The three boys nodded to each other, and among the milling riot of conversation in the backyard, the amplifier began to ring out a ghostly, metallic note that reverberated hauntingly. Arnold's eyes narrowed, trying to make out the fine details on the stage in front of him through the billow of a smoke machine which had just started up. In his periphery he saw Stinky's face over the large fan at stage right, sporting a curled up handlebar mustache and tending to the machine with a wide smile.

Brainy was playing his guitar, the single note he was picking out ringing out in the hot late Summer evening, bringing the crowd to a consensus of cheer. People whooped and whistled, but the crowd was uniformly bent in anticipatory cheering for the band.

Brainy's arm went wide and he strummed a large note, high and pretty, and shook his guitar gently to reverb the note. Arnold felt the hair on his arms stand up when Gerald started in with the bassline, solid and complementary to the alternating, wavering fragility of Brainy's haunting notes.

For several long bars, they held the duet, Gerald walking them through a playful bassline, Brainy embellishing the journey with whimsy. Stoop kid started in, a very simple 4:4 beat with alternating snare and kick drum accents. The three of them concentrated on their instruments, the song continuing but not progressing or alternating from the same four bars played over and over.

Arnold's breath caught in his teeth when she stepped out onto stage, a blonde spectre floating to her guitar and shouldering it quickly. Behind the roar of excited blood in his ears, he heard the crowd begin to cheer with enthusiasm. Without taking his eyes off Helga, he heard people in the crowd call out her name, and something else.

"_Orphan!"_

Helga paced nervously from end to end of the stage, not yet playing but looking back and forth from out into the crowd and back at Brainy. Her pacing betrayed her heart to Arnold; she was nervous. Extremely nervous. Helga stopped in front of the microphone, pausing for a moment before shaking her head and moving away, saying something he couldn't hear to Brainy. Brainy, Gerald, and Stoop Kid repeated the same measure they had just played, extending the introduction of the song while Helga gathered herself.

Arnold's eyebrows went up when he watched her pull a beer from behind one of the smaller amps, pulling from it deeply before she walked back to the microphone, scanning the crowd for something. For someone. For him.

When her eyes landed on his, her hand automatically struck her guitar, an ethereal, chrome-steel sound screamed from her amp, gently reverberating and pouring through the soundscape Brainy and Gerald had put into place. Someone in the crowd hollered, a high whoop of joy at the beauty of the sound. Helga strummed her guitar, pulling from those strings the strange phantoms of smoke and steel that tugged Arnold's eye contact with her deeper.

Without breaking that intimate stare, Helga's mouth opened and her smokey, passionate voice sang out, landing on the right bar with the sweet distortion she bent with her guitar and that Brainy and Gerald mixed with steady story-book music.

"_Baby, I get nervous,  
__Just a-being in your service.  
__Words are full of indecision,  
__They evince the troubled nimble wit,"_

Arnold's chest tightened, and his breathing stopped. Helga's voice was beautiful. Within the shaking, nervous tremble she wove the heartfelt sweetness he'd always seen in her, edged with the dangerous scratch of a lifetime of troubles. As she confessed. As her ribcage opened and exposed in front of everyone they knew and more besides the contents of her heart.

"_Oh, nothing in return  
__But storm and pessimism 'stead of dreamin',  
__Being good for me and  
__Just a-standing in your pretty prison.  
__You're standing here,"_

Helga's voice rose and fell with the gentle rocking of the melody, accompanied by the impressively thickly layered sounds that Brainy poured out to join Helga's high, ghostly sounds. She paused her, half a bar passing before she closed her eyes, squeezing them shut as if looking at Arnold was a painful ordeal that she could no longer withstand.

"_You think you love me,  
__Don't you?"_

She held every long vowel, pulling the question out from her lungs, high and sweet as Spring, a gentle tremble of fear behind it. The line was long, and soft, and she opened her eyes slowly as she sang, shaking her head sadly while she posed the question.

"_Maybe you're the presence  
__That begs needing other reasons.  
__I got "Summer still looks pretty,"  
__I got hungry for the hungry seas.  
__Oh, living for the people  
__That have nothing but their blues,  
__And I have nothing to be nervous about,  
__Hungerin' over you"_

Stoop Kid's steady rhythm, tirelessly drummed out, counted the beats that Arnold's heart managed to click out as Helga's song pinioned him where he was, helpless. He'd never imagined that he would hear sounds so wonderful, so massive from a four piece band composed of his old friends. He'd always known Helga was a genius, brilliant beyond anyone he'd ever met, and her creativity and passion for art had always been one of the most attractive things about her. But he'd never put something so fragile, so fine, so silvery-hued and white in his mind as the song by Helga's band that filled the air above the trees.

"_In the same rich path  
__You and I align."_

Helga held her vowels again, the last verse pushed up from her tiptoes to throw out above the crowd, out over the building, casting her wish up into the night sky. Arnold's chest heaved, the breath finally rushing from him in desperate need. He had chills, his skin pricked and risen where Helga's voice had touched it. He had never felt as sorry as he did when the song came to its slow conclusion, Helga bent over her guitar and coaxing a last few notes from the precious instrument of her expression.

He felt his hands obey the slow command to clap along with the rest of the gathered party, who so emphatically showed their approval for the offered song that it drowned out the last few seconds of the piece. Arnold watched Helga find his gaze again, a red flush on her cheeks.

She flashed him a confident smile, grabbing the mic and looking back out to the crowd.

"Thanks, thank you, you guys are awesome. We're Orphan, and we're super pumped to see all your faces out there tonight," Helga called out confidently. A few voices whooped their encouragement out to her. Someone whistled. "Aw you guys are too sweet. Keep it in your pants," she sneered, and the audience laughed. Arnold found himself laughing along, somehow unbelievably proud of her in this moment, as if he felt some shared sense of ownership over the whole thing. Helga turned back to the band, saying something outside the range of the mic, then turned back to the crowd with a smiling snarl.

"This is '_Tibetan Pop Stars_.'"

Her hand savagely strummed the guitar, a low and dirty chord ripping from the amp and shocking the vestigial pleasant syrup of the previous song from his bones. This was a different style of song all together, reminiscent of 90's grunge or girl rock. Right away, he felt like this suited her more. Perhaps she chose to open with that far more sensitive, revealing song as a way to communicate something. That first and foremost were those sweet feelings, tender and difficult to express for her, that she could confess to him. Feelings of nervousness, of being unsure, but of being hopeful and reverent of the dream of being with him.

Arnold wondered if he was putting too much thought into it for the briefest of moments before the song began, Helga's voice starting in a lower, grungier growl.

"_How content are with ones with simple demands?  
__They meet their fiancés cherry picking out in Canada  
__While cursing the river, a seven fingered man  
__His three sleepless wives all equally sick of him"_

Immediately, Arnold was thrown off balance by the cryptic and unusual lyrics. He could barely follow along, unsure of the meaning. Helga's lyrics felt obfuscated, hidden from immediate understanding. Her voice still carried that sweet undertone, but the overall delivery was harsh.

"_Honey I left to see some action.  
__What's with all these swamps?  
__All I'm passing are hospitals and space-camps,  
__Nobody is asking me "What about your other?"  
__If they did I'd tell them you're a-_

"_Stranger in India.  
__I'm gonna be creeping on you so hard,  
__You're seducing Tibetan pop stars and  
__Wrecking motor-cars"_

The lyrics unfolded, opening meaning to him as he patiently waited for the hook. The song was also about him, though hidden through so many layers of indirect meaning and reference it would make James Joyce quietly applaud. Specially, the song was about the bitterness she'd felt about Arnold's departure. The realization came subtly as he slowly peeled back the layers of misdirection and allusion. Helga wrote guardedly here, less accessibly opening the wound she'd kept hidden for ten years.

"_I know its true,  
__This Is wrong love.  
__Why is everything so expensive?  
__Maybe in two years you can forgive me.  
__I'll be living kinder,  
__I'll have found my place as a-_

"_Stranger in India.  
__Doing OK so far,  
__I'm just waiting on the feathers and tar.  
__You are the only one!  
__You are!"_

In the letters she wrote, what did Helga say to him? What did Helga confess, what did she conceal? Was she laid bare, all secrets left out in the open for Arnold to consider? Did she weave meaning in poetry as she did here, with verse and hook and chorus? As she concluded this most recent verse, her voice carrying the note on the final "are" for several beats, wavering and struggling to keep its strength, the chills on Arnold's arms and neck sharpened, spreading down his back as she lead, voice cracking, into the turn:

"_Nobody deserves you the way that I do,"_

Arnold's stomach flopped cold like a glacial stone. Her voice lifted the phrase up, bringing it from soft and sweet from the sighing "deserves" into a sharper point full of bite on the "do."

"_Nobody deserves you the way that I do,"_

Again she repeated the mantra, an almost sarcastic twinge in her voice, carrying the sour note of remembered loss within it as she re-locked and held eye contact. Suddenly, Helga and the band erupted simultaneously, her mantra repeated with every decibel of gravely and growling force she could muster:

"_NOBODY DESERVES YOU THE WAY THAT I DO, AND,  
__NOBODY DESERVES YOU THE WAY THAT I DO!"_

The terrific force of her. The terrible awe in Helga Geraldine Pataki. Arnold felt his teeth rattle in harmonic resonance to the rage the amplifiers burst. Behind her, the band ripped music from their instruments, pounded the cadence out with fist and foot, arched and bent in passion over the weapons in their hands. Helga's body arched as she played, not pausing for the slightest for Arnold's tempestuous heart keep up.

_"Come home my stranger in India,  
__Because waiting on you is too hard!  
__The reason I haven't written back is because  
__I'm still doing all that bad shit I was."_

_There is what she meant to tell me in the cafe_, Arnold recognized with a flip in his guts. She'd always felt this way. Helga never felt anything but what she felt now, and what she felt then. She had never been able to articulate it to him except once, under duress, and then she rescinded the confession the instant he applied pressure to see if she was being honest. Learning she had been _caught up in the moment_ had left Arnold confused, sickened, sad, and tired. Something had just _clicked _into place when he considered her feelings for him. When he made his confession in the jungle, he extracted hers from her a second time. Now, he was listening to her third.

The song shifted, reverting back to the dramatic chords and calmer hook from before, the catastrophic climax of the song winding down to its simple denouement:

_"My love is average.  
__I'll obey an average law."_

Helga repeated the line twice, singing it the second time with her eyes closed and face squeezed tight in pain. It gored Arnold to see it, to hear her disregard her feelings as somehow less than spectacular. Once in a lifetime. Iconic for an era. He wanted to rush the stage, to grab her by her pigtails and bow and shriek how amazing she was to her. He wanted to fill her lungs with yellow, he wanted to pour into her eyes the flashing reflections of ponds in Winter, and scrape the sounds of the stars out of the sky for her to plug her earphones in. Her song made him feel weak, and small, and elevated within him the desire to break the limits of his mortal shell for her.

Arnold stood confronting the truth, the thing he had chased and known since he was nine. As he watched Helga and her band finish the song and begin right into an energetic, fast instrumental piece that engaged each member's whole bodies, he was forced to reckon with the facts.

He was in love with Helga, and had always been so, and would remain thus until breath no longer dragged from his lungs.

* * *

Several songs into their quite lengthy set, and Arnold had never been on such a wildly emotional and difficult ride in his life. Partly because he had the special awareness that _he_ was the subject matter for most of the songs being played, but also because of the amazing revelation that Helga was having _fun._

_Has she always been this impressive? _Arnold had always considered her to be extremely expressive, emotive, and passionate. He saw within her heart and knew the safeties she put in place to guard herself, and knew that even deeper still there were precious thing, small things of unspeakable rarity that had value beyond reckoning. And he knew her to be powerful, a veritable force of nature. From what Rhonda had told him, she was finally returning back to that old fire.

But the Helga on stage was _commanding. _Her presence on stage captivated not only him, but the entire audience. When she threw her head back, fingers madly noodling a blistering riff, people howled along to her pantomimed roars. When she cradled the microphone and cooed salacious words of leading some unnamed _someone_ to the mattress for a desperate instructive _lesson_, Arnold felt the electric tingle of lust in the air palpably. He marveled at the woman so perfectly in her element. He felt _proud _of her, as well, an ownership of her accomplishments settling in his heart, neatly tucked against his germinating possessiveness.

And so through such dramatic upheavals Arnold felt every inch of him catch up for ten years lost. He felt as if every fiber of his being, every atom was in alignment, pointed at Helga. The thought that he was somehow quantum entangled with Helga brought him profound joy; to think that if an atom moved within him, in her, too, it also moved. The stupid overcomplicated romanticism of his audacious fantasies so immediately penned in the music-driven furor of his heart thrilled him. He danced to the pounding of his heart for her, the raw and visceral expressiveness of her music the backdrop to his inner performance. His blood danced interpretatively to the sound of her name in his mind.

The night was long. The set had been proceeding at pace for well on an hour now. Arnold was exhausted from tip to toe from the physical exertion of all the dancing he was doing in the crowd to Helga's music, and from the emotional trauma she inflicted on him so sweetly with the words she sang, screamed, shrieked, and simply spoke.

Helga was standing, sweating almost all the way through her hot pink top, face flushed and bangs pressed wet to her forehead.

"Well folks," she strummed her guitar, making a muted metallic noise scatter from the amps briefly. "It's been a blast pouring my heart out to you all tonight." She paused, smiling prettily when the crowd cheered for her and her band. "But we gotta get moving and wrap things up before the cops pepper spray the sorry lot of you."

Brainy lifted a hand up, gesturing with a fist towards Phoebe, who was still on the roof of the frat house with the projector, managing the light show. Arnold turned to look back at what she was doing, observing with keen interest as she swapped something in the projector out, plugging it into what looked like a MacBook.

"Please hold, we're having some technical _difficulties_." Helga casually turned to the rest of the band, who were moving amps and their instruments around on the stage, crowding in closer. Arnold watched with surprise as Stinky-Stinky! All tall and thin and long! In a ridiculous Canadian Tuxedo, denim from head to toe! Stinky! With a turquoise bolo tie!-strugged with the large metal form of a steel drum, rolling it on a corner next to Stoop Kid. He flashed Arnold a smile from on stage, settling down in front of the steel drum as Sid came out from behind him with a pair of maracas.

Eugene came out with a tamborine, and so did Rhonda. Harold peacocked onto the stage from behind the white sheet with a beat up looking, band-sticker festooned guitar, the overtightened strings hanging loose from the head. One by one, each of the kids from the class of PS118, minus Phoebe on the roof, a conspicuously missing Curly, and the totally absent Nadine, took a spot on stage, grinning with anticipation and gripping an instrument to play.

"Took you idiots long enough," Helga snorted into the microphone, smiling at the audience. "We're ready? Okay. So this is the last song. It's my newest; I wrote it a couple of days ago. It's about an old friend of mine, and regrets." Helga smiled again as the crowd cheered, a roar of excitement at the strange menagerie of people essembled on stage.

"Thanks, guys. You've been great. _We're Orphan_. This is '_Young and Happy!'" _She pulled away from the microphone as she announced the song, shouting the title out with sudden bursting emotion.

At once, everyone with a guitar began playing in harmony, a tiered collection of remarkably different tones cascading suddenly from the stage in front of Arnold. Helga led the pack, turning to the gathered crowd of their childhood friends, guiding the transition from the harsh, busy intro, and nodding to the percussion section when it was their time to jump in.

Stoop Kid, Sid, and Stinky obliged, the eclectic and frenetic rhythm they pounded out joining Helga's chorus of guitars. Arnold watched with wonder as Gerald enthusiastically played along, his fingers rapidly plucking the strings on his bass. Sheena stood at a keyboard, playing big chords to round out the massive sound crashing over the party.

Helga turned to the microphone, her sing-song voice carrying a slightly country wash to it, the emotive force behind her smokey vocals still heard clearly over the cacophony behind her.

"_Wild things talk.  
__Filthy reservoir, today you are  
__Twenty one, twenty one  
__This car's uninsured  
__I think it still knows how to run  
__Down to Savannah, Georgia  
__No sisters who came before ya  
__Were so true in all  
__The world going dark  
__And changing around you"_

The band behind her played softer, in lower-tempo and with fewer of the gang joining in while she sang. As soon as she finished her first verse, however, they immediately jumped in, each individual, every friend from Arnold's past passionately writhing on stage to pull music up from the gravel in their guts.

"_Someone we love hitched a ride to  
__Minneapolis, and it aged her too soon.  
__Someone, I never told you,  
__I turned my back on.  
__Now I think he hates me, hates me, oh!  
__To be a child again and easily forgiven!  
__But I've done my fair share to  
__Weaken the envied innocent"_

Something about the way that Helga sang the last quartet of lyrics, wishing for an earlier time, a simpler time when they hadn't lost friends to distance and misunderstanding hitched a wad of emotion in his throat. The way all his old friends lost themselves in the frenzy of the moment threatened to overtake him. _All of this was for me?_ He couldn't imagine the value of such a treasure.

Then, the light changed on the projector, and Arnold had to narrow his eyes to focus on the images being shone on stage and his friends alike.

An extremely quick slide show, each frame lasting no more than a second, flashed on screen. Each image was a picture of a page of a letter in familiar pink stationery in familiar pink handwriting, with a pair of familiar hands framing the page in the shot.

Words he couldn't quite catch flashed across the screen as his friends frenzied in their playing. _Arnold. Miss you. Regret. Come home. Always. Love._

Recognizing the gift he was being given, Arnold slowly fell back onto the tree, leaning against it for support while he watched letter after letter flash across the screen in front of him.

Helga's voice returned, the band suddenly quieting as Sheena calmly played a few gentle chords. Her voice was quiet, sweet, and he paused trembling mid-way into her verse:

"_At least with you  
__I got to be Young and-"_

Suddenly every person on stage shouted with all the force they could muster in response to her couplet:

"_HAPPY!"_

Helga called out again, her hand still on her guitar and another holding the microphone tenderly.

"_With you I got to be Young and-"_

Again his friends called out, shouting with grins on their faces:

"_HAPPY!"_

Helga's voice cracked as she completed the call-and-answer, her voice rising high to a strained, difficult sustained note.

"_Now think of all the strangers I've followed,  
__My hands empty!_

"_WITH YOU~!"_

Helga sang those last two words, her voice trembling and rising and falling, until it gave out entirely at the end of "you," and she fell onto her guitar, hand rapidly shredding her regret from those steel and unforgiving strings.

At that time, Arnold saw curly emerge from the side of the stage in front of a large fan that was blowing cooler air on the crowded collection of musicians. he had a huge hefty bag in hand, and found Arnold's eyeline when he rounded the corner. As the band continued to play, he gave Arnold a slightly apologetic smile, and started to shake the bag.

What seemed like snow cascaded from the bag, caught by the blast of wind from the fan and scattered out across the stage and out into the back yard. Paper cranes, thousands of them, tiny and weightless fell like flakes of snow out over the party, landing in cups, getting caught in the tree, settling in outstretched hands.

Arnold's hand felt itself open, and catch a tiny paper crane floating delicately to him while the riot of emotion on stage savaged itself out.

Unfolding it, his breath caught in his throat, and his legs struggled to hold him up. It was Helga's letters. Not only did she put them on display for him, projecting her painstaking recording of them page by page with intimate photos, but here she was, discarding them to the winds. Letting all those unsaid words go, casting them out like lucky snow, paper cranes folded with care and then thrown away. Jewels of care and effort, beautifully sent out and away, saying goodbye to ten years of regret with a single gesture.

"_Then the day came when I  
__Had to tell you a lie.  
__It was to protect you,  
__And that's another lie!"_

Arnold watched Helga as she sang directly to him now, the barrier between them totally gone. There was no place in their world for walls, not when her every secret had just been literally scattered to the fickle winds. There was her apology for the cafe. There she stated her regret, and Arnold accepted her apology silently.

"_In Savannah, Georgia,  
__Tired specters stretch their arms.  
__Couldn't you stay  
__If you looked the other way?"_

Now she finally stated what she had meant to say for ten years. Helga's heart reached out to him, stranded on stage and exposed even as she had the support and backing of everyone they've ever known. Such a spectacle Arnold had never seen. Every nerve of his felt alive and painfully exposed. She wanted him to stay. Helga was begging him to stay.

"_Oh and at least with you I got to be young and-"_

"_HAPPY!"_

"_With you I got to be young and!"_

"_HAPPY!"_

"_Now to think of all the strangers I followed!"_

"_YOUNG, AND HAPPY!"_

"_You~!"_

Helga's voice cracked and failed her again when she completed the chorus and call, holding and sustaining the note of "you" as long as she could before raw emotion pulled her down.

In frustration, her face grimaced and squeezed wet eyes shut. Her hand attacked her guitar, and joining her was the total collapse of the harmony and rhythm of the collected band behind her. Every person's face contorted in concentration while they wildly shook and trembled with the overwhelming sensations their music was wrecking through them.

Arnold trembled and watched as the band's playing tore itself apart, each member's arms getting tired as they strummed, plucked, slammed, or shook. Brainy knelt in front of his amp, wildly shaking his guitar to force hideous distortion and feedback through the instrument, his shirt slick with sweat. Stoop Kid's arms where a white blur emerging from the visibly damp sleeveless tuxedo. Gerald's chest and arms were dark and damp, and he knelt on stage to keep his hand moving. Helga's hand was a blur, her body bent totally over and her teeth bared.

The audience was losing their minds. Arnold had never heard such cheering, such a roar. The riot chorus in the back yard joined the rabid musical implosion, eventually only Brainy and Helga managing to continue to play their instruments after minutes of frenzy. Then, Helga's arm hung limp while Brainy shook and shivered the distortion from the amp, piercing, dirty noise echoing out over the yard.

Helga grabbed the microphone, pulling herself upright, chest heaving while the distortion continued to howl out of their sound system.

"_Oh at least with you, I got to be young and happy~_"

The entire band leapt to life, suddenly grabbing their instruments in a last burst of energy, picking up their organized frenzy, each member attacking their instrument of choice with abandon. Helga ripped her guitar from her own hands and turned it by the neck, brandishing it like an axe. While the rest of the band very quickly lost energy and the song began to end, she roared in frustration and swung her guitar as hard as she could.

A shower of sparks and the loud digital roar of an amp exploded out over the stage, deafening in its finality. The crowd had shifted back suddenly, a wave of people moving to get a safe distance from the sudden fireball that surged out from the amp at its destruction. Helga perched on top of the ruined cube, panting, the band staring at her with shock and surprise.

A massive roar escaped the crowd suddenly, an actual breeze of hot air rushing past Arnold at the force of their exultation. People shrieked and whistled, whooped and howled. Arnold watched in a stunned daze as people literally threw their shirts and undergarments at the stage, people rushing the makeshift platform to touch Helga.

Pulling herself free from the cords and straps of the ruined guitar, Helga turned back towards the crowd, pushing against their outreached hands. Arnold moved towards stage with the wave of humanity, his hands reaching out towards Helga on instinct even as her hand reached out for his in return.

He felt himself pushed up from below, buoyed by the strong supporting hands of several people suddenly taking it upon themselves to hasten his reunion. Helga yelped in surprise when she was pulled down by several hands, propelling her forward on top of the crowd. Arnold laughed out loud, overwhelming exhilaration dizzying him, as the crowd surfed them towards each other. When their hands met, fingers clumsily and quickly lacing together, the crowd under them cheered. The applauding gathering of their childhood friends smiled and shouted encouragement that was drowned out by the roar of excitement under Arnold and Helga.

"What's happening?!" Arnold laughed as he shouted his question to Helga, who was gripping his hand so tight her hands were squeezed white.

"Bunch of nosey busybodies, if you ask me." Helga tried to sound tough, but the joy in her throat robbed any venom she could try to project.

The two of them laughed and cried out in surprise as they were passed from hand to hand, over the heads of everyone in the backyard, and spilled out onto the porch at the opposite end of the yard.

Arnold stood facing this sea of strangers, holding Helga's hand tightly. All of this for him. He couldn't ignore that the crowd had reacted spontaneously, literally pushing the two of them together and leaving an entire house to their care. Every face in the crowd stared back at him.

"Let's go inside, Arnold. They don't need to see what's next." Helga squeezed his fingers urgently, her voice tremulous and nervous. He looked at her sweating, flushing face, and for an instant could not for the sake of anything possibly recall what anyone else had ever looked like, or what anyone he had ever met was named.

Arnold recalled for a brief moment the instant he had stood at the threshold of the airport terminal, hesitant and unsure of his future. In front of him was the open door into the house, cool and dark and empty, and holding a promise of a radically different, unknowable future. Within were consequences.

Letting her pull him ahead into the house, Arnold tried to remember what it was like to feel anything other than this explosive joy, and was glad that he fell short.


	7. Chapter 7 - Mattress Maker

A/N: Trigger Warnings: References to self-harm, Sexual scenarios, Substance abuse, Domestic Hardship. For readers who want to avoid these things, there is a summary at the end of the chapter so you can skip triggering details and still know what happens in the story. I don't have a lot to say about this, other than it's about damn time. Thanks for sticking it out with me this far. Thanks for continuing to read in the future. Please R/R, I live for your feedback.

Keeping Arnold: Chapter 7, The Mattress Maker Makes His Living by the Minute

"People who are sensible about love are incapable of it." - Douglas Yates

* * *

Grave-like quiet filled the still smoke-fogged rooms of the frat house, empty bottles and discarded red Solo cups crowding like ramparts on every available flat surface, and Helga and Arnold moving through the teenage dream together swirled the silence around them into a friendly companion that gladly filled the spaces between them on their journey. Arnold and Helga held hands together, neither able to speak, both perhaps afraid in their own way of the profane clumsiness of language in this sacred time and place. They were finally together, and neither could bring themselves to mortgage the present simple joy of the other's profound presence for some unseen future filled with conversation.

Helga turned her head, afraid just as Orpheus that if she turned to look upon Arnold he would be gone in a flash. Arnold's contented smile returning back at her quelled this anxious phobic thought. _He's really here with me,_ she realized, and the impatient pace of her heartbeat quickened.

Arnold looked at his arm, extending from his shoulder out like a suspension bridge load-bearing wire, reaching out and intimately woven with Helga's own outstretched limb by the tangle of their fingers. _She's finally going to tell me directly what she feels,_ he realized, seeing the path before him leading him right to Helga, even as she guided him there.

Still silent, Helga lead him upstairs to the room she had chosen in advance. She had selected it for its qualities in privacy; she didn't believe for a second that the instant they turned the corner up the stairs that the entire party wouldn't surge into the house to clandestinely eavesdrop on what transpired between them. _We can't have the whole of creation hearing us_, she chided herself privately. If her plan proceeded as she intended, she would be having trouble keeping quiet.

Arnold followed Helga up the stairs, stepping carefully and watching the strong outline of musculature honed by sports and athletic activity on her back. _Why am I turned on by her back?_ He wondered, feeling his face grow hot and his breath quicken at the realization. _Where is she taking me, to be alone?_ Arnold doubted very much that he would remain the gentleman he was raised to be should she sequester him into a private space of _proximity._

Down the little row of rooms at the second floor loft area, past the beer pong table that had been set up, squeezed behind a linen closet and a bathroom, a door of significance loomed before Helga. She paused at its red surface, her free hand touching the wood, feeling the weight and strength in it. _It's really happening. Don't fuck it up, Helga, old girl. He's right here. Don't go all hot/cold on him now, when we're so close._ She gathered her courage, closing her eyes to take in a shaking breath. It was now or never again.

Helga turned at the door, loosening her fingers to completely turn to face Arnold, her hand re-engaging that affectionate tangle with gusto as soon as it was possible.

"Arnold, I have to tell you something important," she started, her voice shaking audibly. She couldn't hear her thoughts for the riot of hammering her heart beat out. In the dim light of the second floor, he looked positively angelic. Her legs almost gave out, and the instinct to run past him and out into the street to fresh air and solitude crept within her, threatening her courageous confession.

Arnold nodded in reply, his mouth too dry to offer verbal encouragement.

"I'm just really…really nervous right now, actually," Helga stammered, looking down at her feet. "I hate this feeling." Her eyes squeezed shut. She sincerely hated feeling vulnerable. It frightened her, it made her angry. She only had herself to rely on her entire life, even Phoebe had let her down plenty of times. All she had was her own strength. Facing the person that took it from her so easily frightened her.

Her eyes opened when she felt Arnold's thumb gently rubbing hers, the simple but strong squeeze of his fingers around hers. Looking up at him, she only saw the simple kindness he had always shown her, effortlessly. Because that's just who he was.

Arnold watched and waited, understanding her nervousness all too well. He felt badly that he might have had this effect on her. Though he was nervous, it was from excited anticipation. An eagerness to see what was around the corner. He only felt uplifted by Helga, and was nervous to know where he would end up next. He offered her what comfort he could, a simple rub of the thumb. She looked up at him, her large blue eyes wide.

"Arnold, I-" she began, but was interrupted by the sudden clink of a glass bottle downstairs. Simultaneously, the two reluctant confessors turned their heads to look over the loft railing.

A sea of strangers moved through the house as quietly as possible, Helga's oracular prediction vindicated with gusto. At the head of the crowd, the familiar faces of PS118, hushing Harold harshly as he struggled by a tower of bottles and cups, teetering precariously.

"Oh for fuck's sake," Helga growled. "We can't even get five minutes alone here. Criminy, it's like the whole world has to know our business!"

"Well," Arnold finally said, his voice cracking. "They did just see the whole show...and literally deliver us to the doorway." He turned back to Helga, taking her other hand and squeezing it with his. Now they were joined with both limbs, a single circuit of heartbeats racing through one of them and answering the echo call in the other. "Just say what you were going to say...quietly." He smiled at her, his eyes drooping contentedly.

Helga's face burned with embarrassment, and the default scowl of anger struggled with the goofy grin of bliss she was fighting against at Arnold's sweet little gestures of tender kindness.

"A-ah...Ah, uh, hey. Hey, uh." She stammered, the thoughts she had woven together to deliver, the practiced speech she had mentally prepared over and over leaving her immediately. "Hey, Arnold. Hey, look, let's...let's go inside." She bashfully looked away from him, her voice low and quiet.

"Whatever you say, Helga." Arnold grinned, turning to the crowd. He blew them a kiss, flourishing with his hand into a dramatic royal wave. "Sorry folks, show's over."

Helga's shoulders hunched over her ears as she sought to escape the scrutiny of everyone below them, and her now free hand fumbled with the door knob for a few frustrating seconds, before the door was swung open and the two of them disappeared inside.

_Privacy at last,_ she sighed inwardly, the tension in her heartbeat unwinding when she heard Arnold lock the door behind them. She was smart to have chosen one of the only bedrooms with a deadbolt.

_Now we'll get somewhere,_ Arnold excitedly thought, energized by the immediate future, extraordinarily aware of everything about her, her every movement and gesture. He wondered if he had ever seen anyone with such clarity.

"So...so I was going to say," she started, standing on the far side of the room from him. She needed physical separation if she was going to proceed. He just did too many things to her when he touched her, too many nervous things and warm things and tingling things for her to concentrate. "Maybe you should sit down, Arnold," she said with some concern. "This is gonna take a while. I'm not exactly into the whole _brevity_ thing."

Arnold parked his butt on the bed immediately, smiling wide and expectantly at her. "Monologue away, Helga. I'm all ears...and I've been waiting a long, _long_ time for this."

_You and me both,_ she mused. How ridiculous it felt to her, now, that he was not only expectant of her answer, but excited to hear it. _Arnold actually feels something for me,_ she realized with a jolt. Even if it was small, even if it was just raw physical attraction or maybe more than friendly curiosity, or even if it was some kernel of affection, she could not deny that he clearly had a vested interest in what she was about to say. He was _anticipating it._

The shocking revelation that even a tiny part of her girlhood fantasies could be actually true, despite all logic and experience, made her feel light and giddy. Like she was some sort of effervescent bubbly soda, and the flavor of her heart was bounced and buoyed by the impossible lightness of being cared for. She fought off the smile on her face, but a massive wave of self-consciousness made her feel as if she was impossibly obvious in her every thought and expression. Surely, she felt with mortified silence, Arnold could read literally everything she was thinking as clearly as if she had written it down for him. _Hell, he saw all those letters,_ she reasoned. The exposure thrilled her, just as it made her want to flee.

On the razor's edge of courage and cowardice, Helga perched prepared for her confession at last. She rode the lightning line of jagged uncertainty between the status quo of decades, silent unreciprocated longing, and an unforeseen future where she and Arnold had no guarantees. _Can I really do this, after all? _Doubt crowded her mind, threatening to overwhelm her courage with its clumsy, dough-like push and spread through her psyche.

Oddly, it was remembering the day she met him as she gathered her thoughts for delivery that gave her the courage to begin. The font opened up, and the deluge poured forth. Opening her mouth, Helga locked eyes with Arnold, and told him everything.

* * *

"I have been in love with you from the literal moment I laid eyes on you. We were three. You probably don't remember, I mean how could you? I won't forget it, though, ever.

"I am sorry to say that my family life has always been shit, and unfortunately even when I was a goddamn toddler that was the case. I had walked myself, in the mud and the rain, hungry and scared and sad, to my first day at daycare. I can't even remember why I was alone anymore; I just was, and when I got there I was soaked to my little unformed bones and had mud head to toe. I'd never known such misery, such blatant disregard for my very _existence. _No three year old child should have to wonder _why_ they _exist._

_"Then an umbrella is over my head. _Remember, I am three, and the whole world as I knew it was Bob, father of the year, and Miriam, a bottomless flask. The possibility of genuine human kindness literally didn't exist to me. And yet, an umbrella is just sitting pretty right over my stupid little head, like it was just obvious that it should be there.

"And a cute little boy with just the sweetest smile in the world is holding it over my head. He looks at me almost curiously, like, '_Why on Earth are you alone and where is your umbrella,' _because he just doesn't have any concept of what it is like to be this miserable. And even then, there's no pity in his little green eyes, just kindness. And then, haha, pay attention, Arnold, because, this is the kicker, he just opens up his dumb little football head mouth and practically murders my little three year old heart.

"He says, 'I like your bow, it's pink like your pants,' and isn't that just the balm of Gilead? What on this bizarre planet we call home can a _compliment_ be? To be _noticed_, to be _validated_ and recognized as a person with needs and feelings? I tell ya, kiddo, I was screwed royally from moment one.

"So I fall in love. Like, _love _love. I certainly know damn well that's what it was because it was ten thousand times stronger than any kind of family fondness I had ever felt. I loved that stupid little boy more than ice cream and fire trucks. Do you have _any _idea how ill prepared a three year old is for falling in love? Like, really, though? Can I just take a minute to elaborate here, and mention that it's likely some kind of cruel cosmic _joke _to make children that young capable of that kind of depth? A little mind and heart so inexperienced gets swallowed up by emotions that big.

"So that's what happened. Helga became her Love. I'm sure you remember the rest, how I showed my affections, and how I masked my overwhelming, frankly frightening feelings from everybody with needless cruelty. Well I will be straight with you finally: I never ever meant any of the cruel or mean or insulting things I said about you, not _once._ Every word I said, I meant the opposite. I wish I could take all seven years of manic obsessive overcompensation back, because you never once deserved any of the abuse I heaped on you.

"But even as I look at your stupid sweet face while I tell you all this I can see that I was forgiven for all that a long time ago. And that's the sweetest pain of all, to _know _that you put water under that bridge forever ago, and I am still ruined with guilt for every single torment I inflicted.

"How I _wish _I could undo it all. But I can't. At least now you know.

"I built shrines to you, you know. I did. In my closets, until you left. I made them out of whatever objects pulsed with significance in my overwhelmed heart that week; once, I collected your used gum from under your seats and desks at school and sculpted it into a pretty convincing likeness. Yeah, it was exactly as gross as you are imagining it, and yeah, I feel super weird and awkward telling you this now. I must have confessed to literally worshipping you as a God so many times in those letters. I had rituals designed to attract your favor, get your attention, distract you from other girls, charms I could perform to get you to smile at me or say something nice. I had a verifiable _culture_ built up to give the massive feelings I had structure and make being as powerfully in love I was at the age I was possible to live through. I'm going to regret those extra shots for telling you that. But my therapist never discouraged me from doing it, she said it was a healthy expression of my feelings or something. Still pretty weird to tell you.

"I was Cecile. I am still blown away that you didn't notice. How many blondes did you know with unibrows? I guess I covered it pretty good, but honestly, Shortman, when it comes to noticing me you always took your time. I'm sorry I deceived you, my beloved, and took away the reunion with your pen pal. I was selfish, and I don't regret it. I got to show you a side of me _nobody _had ever seen, and it felt _amazing. _Almost as incredible as _this_ feels, actually.

"This is insane to me, by the way. I have to keep talking or I will realize what I am saying and seize up and die. You understand, the only thing keeping me talking is momentum, that's why I won't let you speak until I have said it all. So thanks for shutting up.

"It almost killed me when you left. Like, literally. I don't like remembering those first couple of years. I made some stupid mistakes. I...hurt myself once. I immediately regretted it, and thank _God _I had no idea what I was doing and didn't seriously hurt myself. The school noticed though, so did Phoebe. Then everybody knew, _Helga's a cutter, _and just because I tried it _once_ that bullshit stuck with me until college. That heavily contributed to what I will refer to here as The Meltdown.

"Miriam reacted pretty bad to my little indiscretion. Olga moved back home, actually, in a misguided attempt to lead me down a better path or some bullshit, but that only made things _worse. _See, as long as Bob just had me around he had enough of a level of plausible deniability to ignore Miriam's _problem. _I just didn't _care_ how far down into her 'smoothies' she fell, and luckily Miriam had just enough sense to never go past the point of no return. But Olga comes in, meaning well, and has all these trumpeted up concerns about my mental health and then _she _sees the problem with Miriam and gets Bob finally involved.

"I wish you had been here. Things were hard. Even when I was really struggling as a kid, I could talk to you and feel better and usually even end up somehow closer to my family. Not this time. You were living your boyhood dream with your mom and dad. And I was trapped in my pre-teenage nightmare with mine.

"I actually sided with Bob in the inevitable divorce, believe it or not. One night, after he'd found Miriam passed out in the fridge, nearly hypothermic, he comes into my room and sits on my bed and we stare at each other in awkward silence for about twenty minutes before he finally says, 'Helga, I'm sorry I checked out.' I was _blown away. _Coulda knocked me over with a feather. Big Bob Pataki, apologizing to me.

"Don't get me wrong, I didn't forgive him. Think one apology makes up for literally ignoring me for twelve years? No, Helga G. Pataki doesn't play that. I told him, 'sorry Bob, but you're about one daughter too late for that apology,' and he just stares at me with this angry, _I know you are right but fuck you for being so right anyway_ look. Looking back, I can see a lot of him in me. That's the face I make when Phoebe proves me wrong and we don't talk for two weeks. And I kind of understand him better now. Big Bob just couldn't deal with being a family man. Not really. It wasn't something that came naturally to him. Olga's _magnificence_ was the only thing that brought him into the whole situation with interest. That's why she was the favorite. That's why he listened to her.

"So when Olga convinces them to get counseling, after months and months of dramatic, operatic crying and heaving breasts and runny mascara, they go to _one _meeting and Bob comes home and announces they are getting divorced.

"Oh man, it was like the air got sucked out of my lungs. Sure, I hated Bob's guts and thought he was a bastard, but he was still my _dad _and a presence I was used to. Miriam barely said a word, she just upped the smoothie intake and slept a lot more. Honestly, I was so disgusted with her, and Bob had at least offered an apology to me, so when they asked me who I wanted to stay with I picked Bob. Olga and Miriam moved out a couple weeks after that. Christmas that year was kind of nice, actually. Bob and I watched _A Christmas Story _like six times and he called me 'Helga' all day. Miriam called and cried, then Olga called and cried, and then I read your Christmas letter and cried. It was a big day for Kleenex. Market shares went through the roof.

"So that's what happened to Helga. I moved in with Brainy when I was seventeen, not too long after your last letter. I went in to the living room and told Bob I was moving out. He only had questions about how I would pay for it all. Brainy's got a job and I have Bob's little trust fund. We've been roommates ever since. He's great to live with, and my bandmate, so it's a good setup. I can't complain. I thought my life would proceed without you in it ever again, broken into smaller pieces and not what it was when we were kids, but something I could still see myself sticking out to see how things turned out. I thought about you daily, and felt weird.

"I am mad at you, Arnold, by the way. Super pissed off. You owe me a fucking childhood. I wanted to watch you grow into a man. I wanted to see your first day at high school. I wanted to see you get tall. I wanted to hear your voice change. I wanted to be there when you became all grown up. I wanted to take you to prom, and go on your first date with you, and, and sneak into your room on valentine's day to surprise you with...well, nevermind. All of that is over. I am going to always be bitter that I never got to experience any of it.

"That anger carried me through the worst times, though. It's just as precious to me as my most tender feelings of affection. I was _so mad _at you for leaving, and just as bad, I was furious with myself for feeling that. I think that's the only thing that kept the fires stoked through all these years of cold and distance. Because I lost a piece of myself when you left, and I still haven't put it back in its place. I wont dare, not yet, because I feel like I am always inches away from losing you all over again. I can't survive that twice. I won't. Whether I like it or not, there is no Helga without Arnold.

"So, so I guess the point of all this, the whole reason I pulled the stunt with our old friends on stage, the paper cranes thing, the letters, the songs I wrote, all of it...is to keep you, Arnold. I have accepted it inside myself, and I am placing _everything_ on this risky bet, this slim chance. I chase it like a ghost hunter.

"I love you, Arnold. I can't live without you. Not in the way I know I was meant to.

"Will you stay with me tonight?"

* * *

Through the roller coaster journey of Helga's speech, Arnold listened with absolute focus. He didn't want to miss a single detail of her confession. Every minute speck of her was significant to him in this moment, and he bent every cell in his body towards her to listen.

From the touching and surprising story of their toddler years, to the apology for a near decade of abuse, to the shocking and awkward revelation that she had broken down after his departure, Arnold attentively processed the pieces of the person he felt such strong affection towards. Here was the real Helga. She was finally out in front of him, unloading years of secrets, a jazz confessional free of practiced stiffness and alive with all the character and verve within her. He couldn't recall ever talking to her for this long one on one. All of their childhood conversations had been short and nasty, or even shorter when she was nice.

It was a lot to take in, to say the least. He wasn't sure how he felt about the _shrines_, or her dark experiments in self destruction. It made him nervous, it showed him just how intense and limitless her passions ran.

And then she destroys his thoughts, sends them scattering to the winds, and drives all logic and reason from his heart like a Valkyrie riding vanguard into battle. With her question, posed so sincerely, on the heels of her long awaited confession of truest love, Arnold found himself suddenly brought to the stunning realization that the Helga he loved and that was in front of him was not the little girl that bullied him anymore.

The Helga that walked towards him with purpose now, her eyes alive and bright and glittering, was a _woman_.

* * *

Helga snarled when she heard the obvious bump against their door. She was millimeters away from Arnold, her hand almost touching his face, their lips perilously close, and then the goddamn peanut gallery decides to drop in. She whipped her head around to hatefully glare at the closed door, wishing she could strike dead all the clumsy interlopers that had ruined the perfect moment she had finally pulled from the impossible jaws of fate.

Arnold rest his hand on her leg. The heat in her face made her dizzy immediately. She looked down at him, standing over his beautiful face in such terrific intimate proximity that she almost forgot for just a moment that they had unwanted observers listening on the other side of the door.

"Ignore them," Arnold huskily whispered, and Helga's knees were jelly. She found herself unable to help herself, and without defenses she fell onto Arnold like a comet.

Their mouths connected and Helga gasped in surprise at the living shock of the sensation of Arnold against her. The sound escaped her mouth, which opened wide to accept the intrusion of Arnold's tongue immediately. Her hands grabbed fistfuls of his hair on either side of his head, and she pressed herself onto him as firmly as possible. If she had the means, she would have pressed her atoms into his, mingling their quantum electron shells and becoming indistinguishable as individuals. The raw, hot taste of his mouth in hers made her involuntarily let out little sounds of surprise and pleasure, and Arnold paid her back in kind with his own shaking groans.

Arnold couldn't think, he had no higher level brain function. All that he was capable of experiencing was the weight of Helga's body on his, practically poured against him into his lap and against his chest. He felt his hands splayed against her back, fingers digging into her well defined back muscles and sliding underneath the back straps of her bra. When he grabbed her hips, Helga moaned and pushed her pelvis forward, and Arnold growled automatically.

The silence of the room was punctuated by gasps and squeals, and the small sounds of lips and tongues brushing against each other. Yet in each of their lives, never had the two experienced anything so loud as the riot of passion they unleashed in unison. Their breathing was the gale of a hurricane; their moans the roar of thunder; when Helga whimpered his name because his lips found her earlobes every syllable was the catastrophic resonance of a stellar explosion.

Helga pushed her face off his, the strength in her barely enough to create a few scant inches of separation from him. Arnold's face buried itself into the plunging neckline of her shirt in response automatically, and she held onto his head for purchase on reality. She couldn't imagine anything this immensely pleasurable. Ecstasy wasn't a strong enough word for it. In some dimly lit lightpost of awareness where reason still existed, not yet overcome by the tsunami of stupefying pleasure of kissing Arnold, she knew that this was going to escalate extremely quickly, and extremely suddenly their lack of total privacy would be an unacceptable problem.

When Arnold's hand slid around to the front of her shirt, pressing against the slope of her chest, her eyes snapped open as that single thought of exposure overwhelmed her.

Arnold felt Hands on his shoulders when he boldly touched her chest, and looked up from his work of his mouth on her neck. He was panting, barely able to keep his breathing under control for the electric adrenaline lancing through his veins.

"S-something wrong?" He whispered, his throat too dry from excitement to manage anything louder.

Helga moaned when his hand squeezed her flesh, and she almost stopped caring that everyone they knew was listening to them. She bit her lip, rolling her head back and squeezing her eyes shut to focus her thoughts. _Please don't ever stop touching me, Arnold_, she prayed even as she was about to make him do just that.

She let him keep his hands busy for a time, however, wondering how it was he seemed to be so experienced and talented with his hands on a woman's body.

"We can't do this here," she finally gasped, arching her back and curling a leg around his waist. She very much wanted to keep going, she had nothing but an all-consuming desire for him burning her up from the inside. The firestorm of a lifetime of _need_ felt like every cell of her was alight and glowing. She felt her body rocking against his, turning her hips flush against his abdomen automatically. "We-_ah!_-" Helga gasped when Arnold's hand slipped under her bra and touched her sensitive flesh for the first time. She instantly burned that memory into her brain, the first time that Arnold's hands had touched a place on her that nobody else had ever seen.

Arnold listened, but found it hard to comply. His fingers couldn't bring themselves away from her. Every part of him wanted to touch her. He had never felt anything so consumptive and obsessive. He needed to know every part of her. He would forsake anything for the chance, even his own privacy and pride.

But she was the final arbiter of when and where he would finally get to experience her love in it's most physical expression.

"_Where_?" was all Arnold was able to force out, his hand reluctantly leaving her shirt and just gripping her hips. Helga looked disappointed when he stopped.

"Your room. We can't at my place. Brainy," she started, but stopped herself. It felt profane to say another name than his now. She bit her lip in embarrassment.

Arnold nodded, and gently pushed her back off of him by the pelvis. Helga steadied herself and climbed free, standing awkwardly, trembling and alert just six inches from him. It felt like she was as far away from him as when he was in San Lorenzo.

His hand reached out and took hers, and they trembled in excitement and anticipation together for a moment, just looking at each other with silent consensus of the heart. Standing, Arnold took a deep breath through his nose, letting it out from his mouth in a single pressure-releasing rush. A hand pushed his hair out of his face, and back.

"We'll run out. I'll lead. Don't look at anyone but me. Look at me." Arnold found that he meant what he was telling her a lot more than mere instructions for the mad dash to freedom from the house. He was talking about forever. "Just look at me," he reiterated, meaning it with everything in him.

Helga nodded. She hadn't ever done anything else. It was all she knew to do.

Arnold and Helga rushed out the door, pulling it open and dashing out in the crowd of people pressed into the little second floor hallway to listen to their encounter. Past faces familiar and strange, Arnold and Helga escaped the press of bodies and ran out the front door, out into the night together, and towards their shared destiny. Two pairs of footprints ran the same narrow path, mingled and sharing a trajectory towards the same moment in time when two souls would finally join into a greater whole.

* * *

Long ago, Helga had come into Arnold's room for the first time to steal something of his to add to her shrine. She waited until Arnold and his grandfather left their boarding house to go to a baseball game, so that she would have plenty of time to spend surrounded by Arnold's world. She intended to bask in the pieces of his life and learn everything she could.

She still remembered the strange fear and excitement of breaking into his skylight roof, and lowering her wiry, skinny frame into the boy's extremely modern and, she thought, incredibly cool room. She delighted at every detail. She submerged herself in his sheets and looked at all his books and toys, trying to memorize each one. Every trinket and curiosity an item of interest. Every corner a boundary of his existence, and thus the shape of her own life.

She was seven the first time she stood in Arnold's room. She had no way of knowing as she walked the room from wall to wall, counting the paces and memorizing the way the moon looked from his bed that it would be the place that Arnold would show her what his soul looked like some stupid Summer day thirteen years later. She couldn't have imagined the nearly religious beauty of connecting to him, sharing breath and sweat and spit like one body. She had no idea that she was standing in the same room that her beloved would lay with her, and where they would learn what their bodies were made for together.

* * *

"What's this one?" Helga poked a dark line on Arnold's naked abdomen about two inches above his pelvic bone. She was laying against him, their bare bodies clinging skin-to-skin. Her legs wrapped themselves around his, woven like two braids, and she leaned on one arm slightly above her beloved to look down at his beautiful body.

After what seemed like a lifetime, but really was only a couple of hours, the two of them had finally been too physically exhausted to continue their passionate work. Now they lay together in Arnold's bed, Helga's hair down and poured out behind her like a golden wave. Arnold rest his head on a hand behind it, his shoulders propped up by two pillows folded in half. The room was hot, and smelled like bodies.

"That's...a knife." Arnold sounded hesitant to talk about the scar she was asking him about. For the past ten minutes she had been exploring the nooks and crannies of his body she had not yet poured her passionate attention on, eager to learn every secret.

Her eyes widened and her strong eyebrows twisted in hesitant disbelief. "A knife? What the hell?"

"Yeah. I don't like remembering it. It's still a little stiff, so don't poke too hard." Arnold really wished Helga would move on.

"Well don't hold back on me now, Shortman. Recall that I am naked and laying on you. Let's hear the knife story."

"I got stabbed by a _Zetas_ human trafficker at the Texas and Mexico border in Nuevo Laredo when I was sixteen." The phantom pang of the knife wound in his gut made him feel slightly sick. It was not a good memory.

"Wait a minute. Let me repeat back to you what you just told me because I'm not sure your sweet little head understands what you just said. _You got knifed by a Zetas coyote? _How in the _fuck_ did that happen?"

Arnold sighed. She really wasn't going to let it go. She had been grilling him on every scrape and blemish. The cherry-colored clot of the long snakelike scar on his thigh and inner pelvis from the fall with Lila was the last thing left on him she hadn't asked about. He saw the conversations coming on the heels of this story, so he decided to make it good. Hopefully enough to distract her.

"Mom and Dad got wind of some traffickers that were moving some Native tribespeople across the border to work for cartel backed farmers in California. We flew into Neuvo Laredo on the trail, basically just trying to save as many of them as we could. Mom and Dad had some support from the Mexican feds, but, only minimally. The _Zetas_ had bribed their way pretty deep into the command structure, so all we had was a couple of fresh agents and a single detective that had been in charge of the case for the area.

"Well one night the trail leads us to this house where we were told a family of the Natives were being held before they were loaded into trucks and processed into their network, and once that happened they would basically be beyond anyone's reach. They would get filtered out into an extremely dense and complicated network of traffickers and end up all over the state of California. We basically had that night to get them out.

"I was scared out of my mind, but I wouldn't let Miles or Stella leave me behind. See, I knew one of the girls that was taken. Rosa. She was fourteen. Native Argentinian. She was taken from her family when she was thirteen, so she'd basically lived a full year in captivity, moving from country to country. I don't even want to think about what her experience was like. Pretty much the worst thing you could imagine.

So I'm sixteen and in a cheap bullet proof vest not sized for me, and in the van waiting. Mom and Dad had gone in with the agents. There was basically nobody in the house there to guard the captives, just two guys with sidearms. They kept them in place with fear, really.

"So I am waiting and I have knots in my stomach 'cause I don't know, anything could happen in there. I could lose them again. But then they walk out, each holding the arm of these _cartel_ _Zetas_, and the agents are coming out with the Natives on by one. I'm pretty much overjoyed to see them okay. Then I see Rosa come out, and she looks really scared and thin, so I rush out of the van.

"I didn't see the third _Zetas_, but he was around the back of the van in the blind spot. He was basically waiting for his chance, and as soon as I jumped out of the van he's on me. We struggle and I hear mom shout my name and then I heard dad yell 'knife!' and then I feel something hit my gut.

"I read somewhere that getting stabbed doesn't hurt like you think it should. That's a fucking _lie_. It's…" Arnold touched his scar, remembering the feeling with too much clarity.

"It fucking hurts. It _hurts_, Helga. I am pretty much down on my back curled over the hole in my belly instantly. I don't remember what else happened. They told me that he turned on them, and that I grabbed his foot and he fell and they got him right away. I don't remember that, but I do remember sitting in a hospital bed for two weeks in Austin recovering.

"Rosa visited me once, before Miles and Stella flew her back home to her village in the Andes. She thanked me for saving her, and kissed my hand. I felt pretty phony, because I didn't do a _damn_ thing except get knifed immediately and accidentally trip the guy. Mom insists I saved her, maybe saved them all, because that guy with the knife could have hit most or all of them before they were able to get him down if I hadn't tripped him. I think she's just saying that to make me feel less stupid.

"And yeah, it's still kind of painful. It went deep. It missed all my vital organs but it nicked my lower intestine and they had to sew me up with a robot arm and put me on vicodin for a month. That was, uh, kind of a fun month." Arnold grinned up at Helga, who was watching him tell his story with a predatory readiness. The look sent goosebumps up his arms and down his neck and back.

"You saved her," she whispered reverently. "You did."

Arnold shook his head with a smile. "I just got lucky. Mom and Dad saved her."

"No, no, I'm afraid not. Arnold the hero saved her. And got this terrible little mark for his bravery," she smiled, touching the rim of the tough scar with her fingers. "I think you deserve a reward." There was trouble and mischief in her eyes when she looked back up at him, teeth showing in her smile.

That look interested Arnold. He grinned automatically. "Oh yeah? What do you have in mind? A medal? maybe a ticker-tape parade?"

"Actually," she said, moving her body down with a grin. She answered him with her mouth. Arnold closed his eyes and fell into helplessness when he felt her smile from the inside.

She stopped suddenly, leaving Arnold, and he grumbled with frustration. "Why'd you stop?"

She was sitting on his knees, looking down at his body with concern and surprise. Her hands rested on either side of his hips. "What is _that_ one?" Genuine dismay and worry etched itself in her features. She was looking at the long scar, still ruby red and raised as it trailed through his legs and across his inner thigh. "I can't do sexy things on you while I am face to face with _that_. What is that? What happened? It looks fresher than the other ones. What is that?" She looked up at him, and Arnold's heart pounded to see her so concerned, and nervous from the stress of having to answer her. "Arnold, what is that?"

He recalled the terror of the fall. Hitting the rocks with his groin first. Feeling the bone in his leg with his fingertips, sticking out of his thigh. The cold panic, wondering _did it go through my artery?_ Passing out. Waking up cold and his leg tight and hot and throbbing with agony in a cast. Hearing of Lila's heroics. The overwhelming guilt. Two months of recovery and physical therapy to walk right. Something Lila would never get to do.

"I fell." He was far more terse than when he initially spoke of his knife scar. "Helga, I really don't want to talk about that one tonight."

Helga shook her head, putting her hands on his chest. "Sorry, bucko, that thing looks _fresh_. It's _huge_. What on Earth did that? were you gored by a boar or something?"

"No. I told you, I fell." He felt himself closing off, a reflex to protect the experience. A wave of guilt started to swell up under him, rising to his teeth and floating in his eyeballs, making him feel ill. He was naked in bed with Helga, after hours of passionate lovemaking, when the girl who he owed his life to was paralyzed in a wheelchair with her heart broken by him less than half a day ago. _What kind of person am I to do this to two people?_ He suddenly wanted clothes on, so he curled his legs up to his chest under Helga and rolled off the bed to start putting on clothes.

Helga watched him, terrified of what was happening. She felt suddenly very cold, and was very aware of her nudity. She held the blankets on his bed to her chest, covering herself for protection.

_Why wont he tell me? What could upset him this much?_ Helga was afraid to ask him anything else. He was already putting his jeans back on, facing away from her. _I've fucked this up_, she thought with despair. _He's going to kick me out. This was a mistake._

Suddenly, her cell phone started buzzing from a text. The sound echoed in her mind, bringing her back to a similar moment earlier in the night. When Phoebe's phone had been buzzing in a purse. With Lila on the other line. _Lila_.

Lila had mentioned circumstances she didn't know. Arnold was hiding something from her, was putting distance between them after they had finally shared their bodies and souls together. Lila said she was in _love_ with him. Arnold had known how to touch Helga so _expertly._ A thousand imagined scenarios instantly unfolded in her mind. Suspicion towered within her with juggernaut force.

"When are you going to talk to me about Lila," she started sourly. "You already got me in bed, what's left?" She surprised herself with the force of her bitterness. She hadn't meant to say that. It came out of her mouth automatically.

Arnold turned around abruptly. He looked surprised, but also a little angry. "What are you talking about? And I didn't _get you in bed_, Helga, we shared something together. We shared _each other._ Don't cheapen this with your jealousy." Arnold shut up immediately, instantly realizing he'd said the wrong thing.

"_Jealousy_? What do I have to be _jealous_ of, exactly, Shortman? Why don't you enlighten me? I didn't know there was anything to be _jealous_ of until you just told me. I just guessed it was her because _why wouldn't it be_? She always found ways to ruin things for me when it came to you before. So tell me, do tell me, oh sweet, sweet Football head. _What does that scar have to do with Lila and why should I be jealous?"_

The level of threat in her voice was terrifying to him. He was suddenly very aware of her physical presence, the well defined muscles of her arms and shoulders. The way her tendons moved and shifted in her forearms as she clenched her fists. He desperately wanted to avoid rousing her anger to the point that she became physical with him.

"Alright, alright, I'll...I'll tell you, but you need to _calm down._" Arnold sat on his desk shirtless, holding up a hand. "And...you should get dressed."

Helga narrowed her eyes at him, slowly standing from his bed and letting the sheets fall off her body. She stood in front of him, completely nude, her feet shoulder width apart and arms held at her sides powerfully. She defied his suggestion, no longer feeling anything except an aggressive level of anticipation. "Go ahead, Arnold. I am totally calm. Tell me about Lila." Her tone was flat.

Arnold swallowed and rubbed his eyes with his hands. "I fell in San Lorenzo because I was climbing down a waterfall face without a partner. My climbing equipment was rusted out and failed. It was stupid. I broke my femur right beneath the ball joint. Compound fracture. I am really lucky the bone missed my arteries, but I still lost enough blood that I passed out. Lila was there, in San Lorenzo," he paused, watching Helga's black eyebrows raise dangerously. Her fists clenched so hard they were white.

"Lila came after me when one of the guides saw me down the escarpment, getting hammered by the waterfall. If I fell the rest of the way I would have been a goner. Stella and Miles were out on research, so she was the only one with climbing experience in the village that could help.

"She made it down to me and put my leg in a splint. I was unconscious. She somehow made it all the way back up with me on her back, and got me over the rim before _she_ fell, too."

Helga's mouth was an angry thin line, her jaw clenching and moving in anger. Arnold wasn't sure why she was so mad Lila had saved him, but he continued telling her the story.

"Stella and Miles had to save her. I woke up in a hospital in Rio with my leg in a splint. Several surgeries later I could walk with a cane. Physical therapy took away my limp. Lila wasn't so lucky, she," he stopped. Helga was crying. She was staring him down, fury on her features, but tears streaming down her face. Arnold felt sick, but pressed on.

"Lila was paralyzed from the waist down, with partial mobility in her feet and sensation up to half the calf on her right leg. She didn't break her back, but suffered permanent nerve damage. She's been at the farm in a wheelchair since. She saved my life, Helga. I owe her my life. I owe her a lot more than that."

Helga's voice was high with emotion when she spoke, a bitter smile creasing her face. "Like your body? Maybe your heart, something like that? _The_ farmhouse? I'm not stupid, Arnold. The way you touched me," she forced a dark chuckle, tension and emotion knotted in her throat, "there's just no way you've never put hands on a girl before. I can imagine it all too clearly. She saved your life, so you give her yours? Sound about right?"

Arnold narrowed his eyes, shaking his head hard. "No, it's not like that, Helga. Listen,"

"No, I'm done listening to you tonight. I should have known this was too good to be true. After ten years apart there's no way we could just pick up where we left off and be together. I was stupid. Lila called Phoebe at the party. _I knew about Lila_. Now I know why she was in such a panic, and why she _begged_ me not to seduce you tonight." Helga felt all the fury and betrayal she felt flying out of her mouth, each a little knife designed to cut Arnold as deep as she could. "What, are you two dating? Am I your little side piece, back at the old stomping grounds? This some kind of twisted game for you, Shortman?"

"What! Helga calm down, you don't know the whole story! I am _not_ two timing you or Lila or anyone."

"Oh really, do please explain that one to me, Arnold. Because Lila made it seem like she was pretty scared of me _taking_ you from her. You can't _take_ what isn't _possessed_ by someone else."

"No, Helga. Lila and I are _not_ together."

"So explain yourself!" Helga shrieked.

Arnold hesitated, his green eyes searching Helga's for understanding. Her blue eyes were red with tears, squinting with hurt and fury.

"I was engaged to Lila." He finally said, his guts cold and his limbs heavy.

Helga was a blur, her blonde hair flashing behind her as she closed the distance between them in an instant. Arnold felt something hard and heavy hit the side of his head, and stars exploded in his vision and his world flipped sideways.

He shook the ringing from his ears and the blurriness of his vision, seeing Helga hastily throwing her clothes onto her body, her hands shaking violently. His head pounded, immediately swelling on his cheek and temple where she hit him. The familiar fire spreading in his cheek worried him that she had cracked his cheekbone with her punch.

"Helga, wait-" he started, struggling to stand up.

"Save your breath, Arnold. Don't ever talk to me again." She turned to look him in the eyes after she jerkily pulled her shirt down over her head. "I never want to see you. Get out of my town. Get out of my life." Her voice was quiet, shaking, and tight. Arnold felt a tear push itself out of his eye and roll down his cheek.

"Helga, please." All he could do was beg her.

"Goodbye, Arnold." Helga left his room, avoiding looking at him as she pushed past him, whispering her final words to him as she slipped out the door.

Arnold stared at the empty doorway, his face throbbing. Helga was gone. With her left the world, and everything in it.

* * *

A/N Summary: Arnold and Helga share an intimate moment and confess their feelings for each other. Helga reveals her teenage self-harm, her parents' divorce, and how life was like for her when Arnold left. They share a kiss which becomes very physical and passionate, and they go to Arnold's room to consummate their feelings. Afterwards, Helga listens to Arnold tell a story about saving a girl in Nuevo Laredo and getting stabbed for his trouble, and then Helga notices the scar from his fall. She interrogates Arnold, who finally confesses the truth about being saved by, and getting engaged to Lila. Helga lays him out with a haymaker, and furiously commands him to never speak to her again. Thanks for reading!


	8. Chapter 8 - A Song for the Sad Ones

A/N: You probably hate me. Just when they get back together I rip them apart. Keep with me, this is an AxH story, I promise. For now, we see the aftermath of the party from some new perspectives. I am experimenting with my POV shifts throughout the story. I felt stymied by sticking to a single person's POV per chapter, so we might see some similar departures from that style like from chapter seven. I haven't decided if this POV potpourri will be a recurring thing, so please leave comments about this format if you have an opinion one way or the other.

Keeping Arnold, Chapter Eight: A Song for the Sad Ones

"If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can." - William Faulkner

* * *

Brainy stood over the wrecks of Helga's guitar and amp on stage, lost for words. Sweat slicked his shirt to his chest and under his arms, wet from the cathartic release of the show. For Helga, it had been a moment of catastrophic release. For Brainy, it was more of a bittersweet outpour. He ran his eyes over the ruined splinters of Helga's guitar, following the split and curling strings in their death-throes dance up over the shattered pink body. He felt numb. Not sad, not angry, just absent. Departed from the scene of jubilant carnage he had just helped create.

The party had moved into the house after Helga and Arnold minutes ago. Brainy had watched them get carried away by the crowd, surfed to their destiny together by a sea of uplifting hands and encouraging shouts. All his friends from PS118 went in the house after them taking the lead, eager to listen in or catch a glimpse of the inevitable reunion. Only Phoebe had lingered to watch Brainy bend down and start wordlessly picking up the pieces of Helga's guitar, watching him from the roof of the frat house inscrutably. He barely paid her any mind, focusing instead on delicately lining up the shards and pieces of his short time with Helga in her guitar case, attempting to get one last look at the girl he had got to be with whole.

Loading the van alone helped him with his thoughts. Brian went through the motions of lifting amps, wrapping electrical cords, and disassembling their drum kit. All of it went back into his old beat up Volkswagen, stacked to the ceiling absent of any of the purpose and anticipation the last time he looked at the full trunk. There wasn't a show to go play, there wasn't anything to rehearse. These pieces of their lives would go back to their places in storage or underneath the Christmas trees in closets. Tucked away. Out of sight.

He sat on the roof of his van and rolled himself a cigarette. Helga and Arnold would be in the thick of it now, he knew. He could tell by the sudden rush of cheering on the other side of the house, somewhere in the front yard, that the two of them were leaving. Ashing the cigarette, he exhaled a large sigh of smoke and wondered if he would come home to the two of them.

An ugly thought, to say the least.

It wasn't that he was not happy for Helga. Her dream was finally unfolding, and the boy she'd been pining after for her whole life would at last reciprocate her truest feelings. As her close friend, he was happy for her. He was sure that the life she wanted with Arnold would come for her soon.

It was just the fact that his role in her life would soon be obsoleted, and there would quickly be no room for him as Helga's roommate. Realistically, he gave it a month before Helga wanted to move in with Arnold instead, assuming that the football headed boy ended up staying in Hillwood. And he'd be a special kind of stupid to make the kind of mistake necessary to leave again.

Brian was lighting a second cigarette when he heard small footfalls crunch the gravel near his van. He looked down, seeing Phoebe looking up at him from over her small horn rimmed glasses.

"Hi Brian. I came to talk."

Brainy nodded at her, sliding from the roof of his van and dusting his trousers off. He leaned against the hood, watching the large crowd of people dispersing in the front lawn, spilling out into the streets. He spotted several of his old friends among them. They all looked very happy.

"I would have to be especially unobservant to be unaware of your feelings. Tonight must have been especially difficult for you."

"Uh, yeah." He felt like that was a gross understatement. But Phoebe always had a hand for subtlety.

"For what it is worth, I think you did the right thing by Helga. It takes a lot of courage to let someone you care for so deeply go. I know you've been Helga's silent partner in her role in the party tonight, but your cooperation has been instrumental for us, too. Gerald and myself. I wanted to extend my sincerest thanks to you for everything."

Brian had been dreading a conversation of this type since the half-baked conspiracy began. He most certainly didn't want to engage with Hillwood's most loquacious busybody in a conversation about his complex feelings for Helga. He chose not to respond, stubbing his cigarette out onto the thick black rubber of his van's front tire.

"And...I wanted to come ask you for help in the next part." Phoebe sounded reluctant to ask him this terrible thing. Brian just looked at her with his hazel eyes, mouth slightly open. Was she really asking him for more?

"You see...sometime tonight, there is an extremely high probability that Arnold will tell Helga that he is engaged to be married to Lila Sawyer sometime around Christmas."

Brainy's jaw dropped fully open. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. Arnold was engaged to Lila. And he just left the frat house with Helga. Brian turned his head, gazing off in the direction that they had left. What was happening to Helga right now? Was she alright? Was Arnold doing something unspeakable, and sullying her while he was promised to someone else?

Brian looked back at Phoebe, his jaw clenched.

"Yes, I can see you understand the difficulty of the situation we find ourselves in. However, you should know, we planned all of this knowing that Arnold was promised to Lila. In fact, their engagement is the precise reason we planned any of it. I'd like to explain everything to you fully. Now, actually."

Brainy could hardly believe his ears. How could Phoebe be doing something so...monstrous to Helga? Wasn't she her best friend since they were three? What else was she hiding, and to what depths would she sink?

Brian nodded firmly at her.

"Great. We'll be meeting Gerald at the diner. We're planning on celebrating a job well done with some coffee and a slice of pie. The two of us will happily explain everything. Just know, we are acting in what we believe to be Arnold _and_ Helga's best interests...and, what's more, we have Lila's blessing."

The hit just kept coming. He didn't know what to expect any more. She could tell him anything and he would probably believe her.

"I think you probably have a lot of questions, and your distrust is understandable. But, if the plan is going to work, we have to execute the rest of the steps with the same level of precision as we did tonight. And your assistance is instrumental. The unique nature of your relationship to Helga is a pivotal resource that we must be unafraid to exploit if we will accomplish what we must."

Brian stepped into his van, starting the engine and letting the seat belt warning chime ding away. Phoebe leaned into the window on her tip toes, looking concerned.

"I'll find a way to make it up to you somehow, Brian, I promise. I just want you to-" Brainy held up his hand and shook his head.

"No," he said, then, "I'll see you at the diner."

Phoebe watched him drive off in the rearview mirror in his van. She grew smaller and more remote in his periphery, until she trotted back into the house, out of sight.

Whatever they were planning, Brian decided, he would play along just until he found a way to dismantle it all. Helga didn't deserve this, and he would protect her from them all.

* * *

"Tsk, honestly, the duvet is positively ruined," Rhonda clucked her tongue and shook her head, regarding the chaos and aftermath of the party in the large central living room of the frat house. Eugene was stooped over, picking up plastic cups with a contented smile on his small face. "A thousand years of gratitude to you, Eugene, your help is deeply appreciated."

Eugene smiled sunnily at her, shaking the large hefty bag full of red plastic solo cups with a cheeky laugh. "Oh, no, picking up trash is my way of having fun, Rhonda. I'm happy to help."

Rhonda bent her hand on her hip, shifting her weight and looking around the room in more detail. She notably didn't move to pick anything up, but rather occupied herself with looking stylishly thoughtful. It was a task she performed admirably.

"I can't believe it finally happened," Eugene said, breaking up the silence. "After all these years, they finally got it out in the open."

Rhonda nearly reminded Eugene that he had a lot of experience with why it's sometimes a good idea to keep things secret, but thought better of it at the last minute. Discretion had never been her strong suit, but sometimes Rhonda managed to keep a level head when there was nothing to be gained from a catty remark.

"Yes, it certainly was dramatic. How _very_ like Helga. I have to say, however, she could have given me a little advance warning about her little _Joe Strummer_ stunt. The sparks could have set my dress ablaze." Rhonda sighed in exasperation. Really, Helga was impossible to reason with half the time and a positive boor the other, but even Rhonda had to admit, the show was suitable for her. Having lived through it, should couldn't imagine any other possible course of events. "Did you see any of the letters that were getting projected? Talk about _embarrassing._ Some real Dashboard Confessional stuff. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if something like that that I wrote got shown to everyone I knew and a hundred other people besides."

Eugene tied the bag off, and set it down by the collecting stack of them at the front door. He stood facing away from Rhonda, and then turned his head slowly, a smile still on his lips when he sadly answered her. "Rhonda, we _both_ know what happened the last time a letter you wrote ended up in the wrong hands."

She shut up immediately. Rhonda chalked it up to still being a little tipsy and forgetting who it was she was talking to. Of course they were the only two people in the world who knew _that_ sad story from start to finish. Guilt worked its way into her heart, and Rhonda responded to guilt with viciousness and cruelty, a protective mechanism she built up over years of parental apathy.

"That's old history, Eugene. Nothing will come of you speaking of it. And we were having such a pleasant conversation, too, just like old times. That's your problem, Eugene, you simply have no sense of tact or decorum."

The small boy didn't answer her, and just kept smiling as he collected trash. His impenetrable smile infuriated Rhonda. How _small_ he looked, hunched over a table and gathering _garbage._ Even if she had a hand in some awful things that happened to Eugene, Rhonda would _never_ admit that she was the one at fault for his misery. The fact that he tried to insinuate the opposite roused her wrathful streak.

"Fine, fine, keep quiet. That's something you should have done in the _first_ place." She walked out the front door, done with playing maid for Gerald. She wanted to see Sid. He always cheered her up, the little slimeball, with his smooth moves and sweet words.

She found him on the porch, where he had been most of the night, finishing off the contents of a bottle of beer and looking rather becoming in his all black attire, even if it _did_ scream that he was trying too hard. Rhonda slipped up next to him, folding the back of her red dress down when she took a seat on the steps.

"Hey, beautiful," Sid grinned at her. His eyes were slightly bloodshot, and his pupils pinpricks. Rhonda liked Sid when he was on blow. He had a daredevil streak in him. What she liked most of all about Sid was that he knew how to keep his mouth shut, however.

"Hey yourself, you little pusher. How _dare_ you rake in such an _exorbitant_ fortune at the expense of Gerald's guests." She paused, smiling, and putting a hand on his shoulder. "It _is_ exorbitant, right, Sid?"

"Bow howdy, and then some. I think I'll buy myself another car with tonight's haul." Sid tilted the beer bottle Rhonda's way, and Rhonda covered her nose and mouth with a dainty hand.

"Ugh, no thank you. You know I don't drink anything domestic. I can smell the blue collar of the guy that poured that bottle."

Sid sneered at her playfully, shaking his head as he pulled from the bottle deeply. "Whatever you say, babe."

"So, Sid, I was thinking," she began, two fingers walking up his hand and arm playfully. "What do you say I take you up on one of those offers you so gallantly made me tonight."

Sid had made several passes at Rhonda tonight, as was typical of him. He had grown into quite the ambitious entrepreneur, and an accomplished ladies man to boot, and even though her reputation would suffer ignominious wounding if word ever got out that she was sleeping with him on the regular, she somehow found herself still drawn to him more often than not. He made her smile, and that at least gave him value. She was eager to get to her place and get started.

Instead he answered her request with a question.

"Do I make you happy like that, Rhonda?" Did set the bottle down, looking out at the street and the stragglers still gathered on the lawn.

Rhonda found his question to be unspeakably vulgar. What business was it of his how she _felt_ when he was given the privilege of being with her at all? She resented Sid's sudden attempted intrusion into the vault of her heart. She tried to redirect, knowing that usually Sid was an easy one to distract. Her hand slid from his shoulder, into his lap.

"I enjoy myself perfectly well, stupid boy. I can see you do, too, so, let's make a hasty retreat to a nice hotel and treat ourselves to a couple of lines and each other's company?"

Sid surprised her when he shouldered her arm away from him, looking seriously at her. His dark eyes were oddly penetrating from above his long, noble Sicilian nose. "No, I mean it, Rhonda. Watching those two get back together again, it made me think. I don't _mind_ just fooling around in secret and letting you mooch off my supply, but didn't they seem _happy?_ Like, way happier than you or I ever feel around each other?"

Rhonda's temper started to rise, but the level-headed queen of PS118 could manage something as simple as severing ties with a boytoy. She'd done it dozens of times before. She regretted having to do it to Sid, mostly because of their long shared history as friends. It would be annoying to her feelings to be separated from a childhood friend.

She slipped her hands into her lap, and sighed out the tense feeling of frustration she already began to germinate. "Sid, I think we're done now. It's just not going to happen; we're not like those two." She turned and surprised herself with the bitterness in her voice. "I don't know if anyone is like those two, not really."

Sid pressed on. "I think it's worth a shot to try. What's the worst that could happen?"

_Plenty, you idiot._ Rhonda had no interest in pursuing anything even remotely resembling a true romance with Sid, or anyone for that matter. It was just too difficult to manage her image when she had to double check the work of another person. It's why she'd cut ties with Nadine eventually, and why Nadine left Hillwood shortly thereafter.

"Did you not hear where I said I think we are done?" Her tone was cold. She didn't look at him.

"Of course she has no interest in you," a familiar nasal voice interrupted them. Rhonda and Sid looked up to see Thaddeus walking around the house towards them. "A nobody like you, some low level _pusher?_ Stay in your lane, Icarus, you have no business flying this close to the sun."

Sid scowled. Rhonda definitely didn't want to deal with Curly on top of having to sever ties with Sid. Things had gotten troublesome very quickly.

"Hello Curly," Sid said slowly. "You know, it's pretty not cool to barge into a conversation that has nothing to do with you. I'll even ignore the 'pusher' remark if you apologize and walk away right now."

"It's _Thaddeus_ to the likes of you, or better yet, _Mr. Gammelthorpe._ I don't apologize to those who are beneath my notice."

Rhonda scooted back from Sid, beginning to get nervous. She'd already heard that Curly had incited a fight with Patty earlier. If he was this aggressive, it might escalate with Sid as well.

What worried her is that Sid wasn't just a charming, smooth-talking dealer, he was extremely well connected. Rhonda had, on several occasions, pretended not to listen when he got a suspicious phone call, whispering quietly, and continued to act ignorant when he suddenly had to leave for days at a time. She didn't know who he was in with, she didn't _want_ to know, but she knew that Thaddeus had to tread carefully.

Sid slowly stood up, squaring his shoulders with Curly and looking serious. It took a lot to rile Sid up, he was typically very cool-headed and very difficult to ruffle. Rhonda desperately wanted to avoid getting Sid escalated towards the point where the evening would go _extremely_ astray.

She stood up and slipped between them, facing Curly. "Thaddeus, I heard that you've been looking for me all night. Why don't we get caught up right now?"

Sid shot her a surprised look. She held her mask, unflinching at the hurt in his eyes. Curly curled a lip in victory. "It's about time. let's ditch the local wildlife and make ourselves comfortable someplace expensive. My treat, of course, princess"

Rhonda felt revulsion bubble in her at his little nickname for her. She normally felt giddy when someone offered to treat her to something expensive, but when Thaddeus did it, the feeling within her was pure disgust. She hid it as best she could with a blank expression. "That sounds good."

Curly nodded a victorious gesture towards Sid, and started off towards his Bentley.

Rhonda turned around as soon as Curly was around the block, grabbing Sid by the shirt and kissing him hard. She shoved her tongue into his mouth, immediately deepening the kiss. Sid responded in turn, but after a passionate moment pulled away quickly. He stared at her, obviously confused. "Whoa, Rhonda, _what the hell?_ Weren't you _just_ dumping me?"

Rhonda looked at his shirt instead of his eyes, and tried to make sense of what she felt inside of herself. She was somehow very worried about legitimately hurting Sid's feelings, despite herself. And something about the thought of Sid in a dangerous situation made her sick inside.

"Look, I...may have been being too hasty. I _do_ think we can talk about what you want to talk about-later. I have to handle Curly, I'm the only one that can."

Sid looked at her from inches away, his hand on her elbow. She was oddly touched by the intimate contact. "I don't get you, Lloyd. I guess I'm not smart enough to follow how you work."

Rhonda smiled fondly, finally making eye contact and stepping away from him. "No, you're not. But I like it that way. I'll call you tonight when I'm done with Thad. It won't take long."

Sid considered something, then suggested, "You should text me the address of where he takes you, and send me an 'I'm okay' message every ten minutes. If 11 minutes passes and I don't have one, I'm coming with three other guys."

Something within her was oddly touched at his concern. She was confident that she could handle Curly without any issue, but decided to humor his chivalrous request. "Yes sir. Anything else for me?"

"Yeah, actually," Sid looked surprised, as if he had forgotten something. "I got this text from a number I don't recognize. Normally I wouldn't tell you about that, but the person said she was Lila and she needed to talk to you, specifically."

"_Lila?_ As in, Lila Sawyer, wonder girl, long since departed from Hillwood?" Rhonda was a little surprised. She hadn't heard _that_ name in a long time.

"Yeah. Here let me read the text...hold on." Sid fished in his pocket for his phone, and Rhonda stood wondering what else on _Earth_ tonight would bring.

"Here it is:

'_Sid, this is Lila Sawyer. I got your number from Peapod Kid, and I got his number from Sheena. I need Rhonda's number. I have to talk to her immediately. It's about Helga and Arnold. She's the only one who can help me with this, nobody else is equipped for the job. Do not tell anyone you got this request, please.'_

"So, yeah. Kinda weird. I didn't tell anyone else."

Rhonda held her chin, looking out into the middle distance while she thought. _Why would Lila need my help with Arnold and Helga? Unless it had to do with why Arnold returned so suddenly…_

"Good job. Continue to not tell anyone. In fact, give me your phone." She held her dainty hand out assertively. Sid dropped his iPhone into her hand without hesitation. She loved that he trusted her like that.

Rhonda copied the number down, and then deleted the number from Sid's phone and blocked the number from contacting him. She handed the phone back to him with a sweet smile. "Perfect. You're a dream, Sid. Thank you. I'll send you those updates and the addresses. Then when I'm done we'll get together and have that talk."

Sid grinned at her, pocketing his phone. "I'll have those lines ready for you, and the hotel room." Rhonda curled a feline grin.

"Perfect," she said, and meant it.

* * *

Phoebe sat with Gerald and Brainy in the diner booth, enjoying the warming feel of the stale, too-hot coffee their waitress had poured her. She normally opted for tea, but tonight called for a strong wake-up dose of Joe.

Gerald was tucking into a big plate of waffles and sausage, ravenous after an exhausting performance. She had been exceedingly proud of his efforts, feeling powerfully attracted to her boyfriend when he was on stage. Brainy chewed silently on his piece of toast, the only thing the quiet boy had ordered. Finally, she started the difficult conversation.

"Brian, I mentioned to you earlier that Arnold is engaged to Lila." Better to cut right to the heart of it. He nodded, looking tired.

"Well, it appears that as of right before the party, that is no longer the case. Tell him, Gerald."

Gerald swallowed a mouthful of syrup and sausage, tapping the table with his finger. "My man texted me before the party. I didn't get it until we rolled up to the diner. Kinda changes the game, but apparently he and Lila got into it before the party and he broke things off. Said it was 'only fair.' Bold move, and probably the right one."

Phoebe followed it up with her analysis. "I believe that we could not have asked for anything better. Honestly, this eases things for us. If Arnold was single for the party, my conscience is significantly clearer. It might also mitigate Helga's fury at discovering their betrothal."

Brainy looked at her, obviously worried about Helga.

"Yes, it's very likely that the news would hurt her significantly. It was inevitable, though, Brian. The moment Arnold made the engagement, he was going to hurt Helga. We couldn't stop that, but we did what we could to soften the blow." Phoebe legitimately believed what they were doing was for the best. They weren't done, however. Lila was still in the game, she had to assume, and still a threat. She owed it to Lila to treat her as a very dangerous factor in their plans.

"But, if Arnold spilled the beans and Helga _didn't_ freak out, then the next part will be a lot easier," Gerald continued. "In fact, easy as pie. But we gotta assume he did, 'cause he's Arnold and the damn fool can't help but be honest even when it's gonna fuck everything up."

Brian rubbed his cheek with the flat of his hand, trying to make heads or tails of it all. Phoebe guess that he still wasn't sure what the exact sequence of events were, and that he didn't have the type of talents she or Gerald possessed for unraveling. He probably had to listen and observe for some time before he could intuit the truth of a situation. Just being told the facts didn't help him.

"So," Phoebe continued, watching Brian absorb what he could. "We told Helga that if anything happened tonight that she wasn't expecting, to meet us here. Time will tell if she is able to follow this request, or if it will even be necessary. My calculated assumption is that Arnold will be unable to resist telling Helga even if the timing is not correct, and she will come here, quite upset. Or she will run to your apartment. And that's where you're needed."

"Knowing Pataki, girl's gonna be seven different kinds of pissed off and lookin' to lash out. If you want to help, and we really think you should, the best thing to do is help her get through this as closely alinged to 'not mad at arnold anymore' as possible."

Phoebe watched Brian carefully as Gerald made their request. She was sure he would be offended that they would try to manipulate his close friendship with Helga. If she was right about how close they were, Brainy would behave in one of a few different ways.

She surprised him when he opened his mouth to reply by launching into one of the theories, the most likely to occur, to try to cut him off and set him off balance.

"You're going to refuse because you think we're being manipulative of Helga and you, and maybe even Arnold. You feel that we should let things take their course and that we shouldn't try to use your friendship with Helga as a resource to keep her and Arnold together. Your concerns are very valid, Brian, and I would concur with you entirely, except," Phoebe folded her hands in front of her, slowing down her tirade. "Helga and Arnold have never been able to connect with one another meaningfully without something terrible getting in the way. The TPi thing, the whole Jungle adventure with his parents, Lila's engagement, the list is filled with extremely unlikely and profound circumstances that seemed to always perfectly align to get in their way."

Brian hesitated, peering at her. She'd clearly set him on his heels. Good.

"Would you agree that perhaps, it's about time that we tried to counteract those forces for once, and provide them the extra strength and support they so clearly deserve so that they can be happy?" There it was. Her coups de grace. She knew she could count on Brainy being deeply sympathetic to Helga's unlucky streak, and a lifetime of lost chances and missed opportunities. She pressed on, needing to plunge the knife deeper.

"Furthermore, we are not callously manipulating them to be in love with one another - that's already the case. You saw the show. All we are doing is working against their specific natures and the enormous weight of clumsy destiny to help them achieve what is so clearly meant to be. We're not suggesting that anyone _trick_ anyone else. But Arnold is almost guaranteed to make mistakes with Helga, and Helga cannot help herself with her fury and her passion when it comes to him. They need help. That's all we're asking, is to give it to them."

Brian looked down at the table, and Phoebe was sure she had him. It helped that she spoke with absolute conviction, 100% sure in the message she delivered. She truly believed they were doing the right thing. And Helga and Arnold never had to know that they worked so hard to move mountains to give them the best chance at being together they'd ever likely get.

"Arnold has to stay in Hillwood," Gerald finally spoke up. "I can't let my best buddy leave again, but the damn fool's got his head all tied up in jungle vines and messed up shit in South America. He doesn't see how things are here now, and I'm gonna work on him, just like we want you to work with Helga. We gotta turn their heads and open their eyes. That's all."

Brian clenched his jaw and looked back up at them, nodding slowly. "Okay," he finally spoke. "I'll do it."

Phoebe and Gerald relaxed, their bodies going slack. Gerald laughed a little, looking up at the ceiling. Brian looked surprised at them, and Phoebe smiled sheepishly.

"Sorry, Brian. We're your friends, too. We know we're asking a lot of you, especially considering-" she stopped when Brian started to blush. "Well, we just know this is hard. But we're very thankful. We would never ask a favor this big if it wasn't those two. We were nervous about this confrontation."

Phoebe was full of gratitude when the conversation turned to appreciation of the show. They chatted and nibbled on their plates, mutually exhausted from a nightmarish week and cathartic night of emotional tension. It felt good to joke around with Brian again, once the difficult conversation had taken place.

Finally, it came time to part ways, and Phoebe needed to give Brian one last message. After the bill had been paid, and they were milling about outside the cafe, she touched his elbow gently. He looked down at her, surprised at the contact.

"Brian, there's one more thing." She tried to make this as gentle as she could. "Don't sleep with Helga. No matter what, whatever you do. Do not go into her bed. She may try. She may beg, she might even threaten you. We have no idea what she might do, if she is emotionally distraught. But you cannot give in. You mustn't. Please."

He just looked at her. Gerald tried to act like he hadn't heard anything. Phoebe couldn't get a read on Brainy's silent, unresponsive gaze. He left her without answering, and unsure of what his intentions might be.

* * *

"Alright, Thaddeus, you've got me in your car." Rhonda crossed one long leg over the other, impatient to get this over with. "What is this about?"

She was horrified when his previously confident face twisted into a grimace of pain, and he started to hyperventilate. She thanked God that they were at a red light, or she was certain they would have just veered into a ditch. She watched in silent horror while he clutched at his chest and gasped, his sunglasses falling off his face into his lap to reveal reddened, bloodshot eyes.

_What in the hell is wrong with him? _She became very nervous, and held her purse close to her body for comfort.

"What the _hell_ Curly, what's wrong?" She sounded as concerned as she felt. She didn't _hate _Curly, he just repulsed her physically. And mentally. In every way, actually.

He choked back a gasping sob, cutching his chest near his tie, and looked at her with pain on his face. "Everybody was so, so _mean_."

Rhonda sighed, truly exasperated but fully cognizant of why Curly was so upset. She was the only person who knew the truth, as far as she was aware.

"I d-don't under_stand_ they j-just laid into me _right away_," he struggled it out, managing to push the expensive car into motion when the light changed. "I didn't even _say_ anything and they started in with th-their _viciousness."_

_Poor Curly_, Rhonda inwardly sighed. Nobody but her in Hillwood knew it, but Curly suffered from pretty severe social anxiety. Unfortunately, he was also irrationally hostile when he was triggered, his anxiety expressing with hyperactive vitriol and bile. He was probably triggered the instant someone recognized him and teased him for his attire. Sid was a likely culprit.

"And, and then P-patty _hits _me. And Arnold, what the _hell_ happened to him? He used to always be s-so n-n-_nice._"

"Oh, Thad." Rhonda may have felt that Curly was a repulsive antithesis to her, and found his personality uncomfortably similar to hers and therefore unspeakably repellant, she wasn't devoid of compassion and fondness for his weaknesses wormed itself into a patience she sometimes could express to him. He _was_ special to her, in the manner she could manage, but the complex and confusing nature of their friendship and his unwanted romantic feelings for her kept her at a distance. Usually.

When he fell apart in private with her, Rhonda found herself unable to hate him totally. He managed to earn her compassion, born of her pity.

"They just don't know how to talk to you," she offered quietly. She texted Sid to tell him they were still in his car. "After your incident, most everyone has reason to mock you and distrust you. What you did to Sheena was...well." She didn't elaborate. _That _ugly incident didn't need to be elaborated on. Sheena was recovered now, but everybody recalled with fresh clarity his nervous breakdown and the collateral damage it inflicted on their friend.

"But so much time has passed," he bitterly replied, finally having life in his voice again. "And they are no better! None of them are innocent, they all have blood on their hands!"

"Thaddeus, I think it's maybe best if you don't come back to Hillwood." Rhonda didn't look at him. It hurt her somehow to suggest it, but she couldn't reasonably suggest any sort of attempt at reconciliation. Better to move on, and start a new life.

"I won't leave here without you," he darkly chuckled. The sound made her nervous. Her finger pressed the button to call Sid, holding it down. If she lifted her finger, Sid would be on the other line in an instant.

"I am _not _going anywhere with you, Thaddeus. Pull over. Now."

"I wish Arnold was here," he sighed, congested from the tears he had choked back. "He would fix this. I won't pull over. You're going to come with me, and listen to my apology, and then we will start over together."

Rhonda growled with impatience. "None of that is happening tonight or ever, Thaddeus. Don't make me regret feeling sympathetic to you just a moment ago. I am warning you, pull over and let. Me. Out."

He hesitated drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as he thought. "Fine," he finally said. Maybe there was some rational side of him left. "But only if you promise to listen to my apology before you go."

She breathed a sigh of relief. At least he wasn't going to try to take her by force.

"Alright, Thaddeus, I will listen just this once. Make it good, though. I don't think we will see much of each other tonight ever again." She meant it. He was too unstable, too unpredictable, and too threatening for her to feel safe around. Even if she felt bad for him, and felt some loyalty to their shared history, enough was just about enough.

Curly pulled them over into a parking lot. He squeezed the steering wheel with white knuckled concentration, breathing ragged and his forehead damp with sweat.

Finally, he spoke.

"I'm sorry for harassing you like an absolute churl for all these years. Nobody else _listens _to me the way you do. I always felt like we were kindred spirits, like you understood me in some way, and I became infatuated with this perception. I...made mistakes. I exacerbated the problem by amplifying my outbursts and projecting my insecurities on you and the others. When I hurt Sheena," he paused, and Rhonda watched him remember the painful memory. "Well, I have done what there is to be done about that. I just wanted to say, that I apologize to you. For everything. Watching Arnold and Helga tonight, I just couldn't stop remembering all the hideous things I have done and said. You never deserved my abuse, and I always just wanted your love and attention. I am sorry I was never able to accept that you wouldn't be mine."

Rhonda was stunned. He really had apologized. He had owned up to his awful behavior in high school. He actually apologized for all the nasty things he did when she "friendzoned" him, as he viciously put it. She was struggling to think of something to say, when he interrupted her thoughts with a final message.

"I won't bother anyone ever again. You won't have to worry about ol' Thaddeus anymore."

_That _gave her pause. She didn't push any further. She simply nodded, and put her hand on the door handle opening it slowly. She slipped out of the car, leaning down to give him one last good look. Something told her she should.

"Thank you, Thaddeus. Goodbye," she hesitated, feeling the rush of the word leaving her lungs, chilling her as it went. "And, you can call me sometime. We'll keep up."

Curly smiled sadly at her, reaching over to shut the door. Rhonda watched him drive off, pulling out of sight in the distance. She lifted her finger off the button on her phone, putting it up to her ear.

"Yeah? Everything okay?" Sid didn't beat around the bush.

"I don't know. Pick me up. I'm at the corner of Wallace and 10th."

"On my way, babe." Rhonda hung up.

_I really hope I am wrong, _she thought. _He isn't that stupid. He won't do anything to himself._

Rhonda started going through the mass of texts she got from her informants at the party, sincerely hoping she was wrong.

* * *

Lila took a long drink from her mason jar of sweet peach tea, the large ice cubes jingling and jangling in the oversized glass as she brought it to her naturally salmon colored lips. A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead, sliding down her freckled cheek, and plunging down the dramatic feminine balcony of her chin. She swung gently in her porch swing, her legs dangling beneath her as the white wooden swing creaked back and forth in the late Summer night.

A few candles lit the porch around her, casting dappled and dancing amber light on everything. The house was otherwise dark, and as quiet as the two story unoccupied farmhouse ever got. Up above, just outside the mosquito netting barrier that enshrouded the porch, a beautiful night sky sliced through with the Milky Way glittered and shone onto the peaceful acres of farmlands that were her birthright.

With Arnold gone, it was all she had left. She had a mind to enjoy it while it was still hers.

She looked out over the little hill that swelled gradually up in the back of the large field she used to play in as a little girl. The happy memory of the hill pushing up under her legs as she climbed it again and again just to roll down, squealing with laughter, felt bittersweet as she rocked in her swing, no longer able to do any of that. Someday, hopefully soon, she would be able to walk again, but this farm would be long gone by that day.

Arnold had rushed to her aid immediately after the flood that took her parents. They didn't see how deep the water had been, and tried to drive through. She had cried for a week, and Arnold stayed with her the whole time, holding her hand through the funeral, attending the reading of their will, and never straying from her side. He had been a Godsend, and Lila was truly thankful for his help.

He sat down with her and helped her figure out what she was going to do about the farm. It broke her heart to sell it, especially she had finally moved back from Hillwood just a few years ago. But she and Arnold went over it in every way they could imagine, and, sadly, selling the farm was the only way. She had left the farm with Arnold later that month, and joined him in San Lorenzo while the lawyer prepared the sale.

And then everything went wrong in the jungle.

A warm breeze tinkled the wind chimes above her head. She rolled her head back, feeling the bourbon she had spiked her tea with start to warm her skin. She hadn't gotten drunk since Arnold's first night at the farm. She smiled privately at the memory of the taste of sweet corn bourbon on his lips. She had kissed him, of course. Arnold never made a move on her himself, but learned to follow her lead fast enough. She'd almost gotten him in her bed, but had been too drunk, and he kissed her forehead with affection and tucked her in and let her sleep it off, alone. She never got the nerve to try again. And now he was in Hillwood, likely doing the things with Helga that she wanted him to do with her.

The unexpected talk with Helga had been difficult. She was the last person that Lila had wanted to talk to in that moment, but in a terrible way, nothing could have been more appropriate. Arnold had broken her heart before the party and requested she remove the ring that once sat on her finger, and now lay profoundly on the table next to her, on top of her family Bible. And then Helga had killed what was left of it with her viciousness and cruelty. She had to hand it to Helga; if she had put half as much passion into keeping Arnold around before as Helga did in taking him, he might still be at her farm with her.

She drank deeply from the mason jar, the sweet burn of the bourbon mixed peach tea warming her throat and dizzying her senses. She need good old fashion stupefication tonight. She recalled the first time she drank, sneaking strawberry wine in the barn with her cousin. They had overindulged in that sickly sweet libation, tittering together at the ridiculousness of boys and the meaningless chatter of their teenage peers. She recalled she had confessed her blossoming affection for Arnold to her cousin, her freckled cheeks red from drink and embarrassment. How appropriate, then, that she would get drunk tonight and think of Arnold again.

Of course, Lila was not done. She wasn't some wilting flower. Her mother had fought to give her a sense of agency and an inner strength that she now leaned on with a thankful heart. It was worth all the typical teenage strife she had gone through with her mom, to learn the lessons of independence and principled self-confidence. She still had tools at her disposal. And Helga had given her something tonight. She had lit the dimming flames in her heart, her boastful bellows roaring to life the cooling furnaces of passion that her injury and tragedy had almost quenched.

If Sid ever gave her Rhonda's number, the pieces would begin to move. The work she had given to Phoebe and Gerald would find a foe more terrible in Lila than they ever anticipated. Only Gerald would have an inkling of what they were up against. Even he, though, would have trouble stopping her once she got started.

She set her mason jar down, the iced drink tinkling gently. Her delicate fingers rest on the black book next to her family Bible, similar in size and shape, a small moleskine with hand-worn edges and yellowed pages. There were no holy verses in her version, however.

Somehwere in Hillwood, Gerald had the only other copy of this book. His version was incomplete, however.

Fuzzy Slippers, the secret information broker for all the urban legends, rumors, and secrets of Hillwood, in actuality Lila Sawyer these many years, reached for her cell phone when it began to ring in the quiet of the late summer evening. She didn't recognize the number but was still absolutely certain it was Rhonda.

_Time to get to work,_ she thought, and answered the phone with a dainty "Hello?"


	9. Chapter 9 - White Dress Very Best

A/N: Is it just me or is Grimes literally Helga Pataki? At least in _this _fic, the physical resemblance is so exact that you really should just imagine her as playing the part of H.G.P.

So for this chapter, I am departing heavily from what we have known as my prose before. Consider this something of an experiment, but also a return to a much more raw, poetic form that I had years ago. It just felt right for this chapter, as we see the aftermath of the party through Helga, and then through Arnold.

We are working towards the next big reunion soon! Keep courage in your heart for these two. They need it!

Keeping Arnold, Chapter Nine: If She Wears a White Dress; If He Behaves His Very Best

"It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane." - Philip K Dick

* * *

Ugly rotten raw riot wrinkled in long stitches with yellow sap and tar of pus in between the threads, big globs of coagulated blood tumoring around the stiff razor wire neat in rows lacing the spaces rent in shredded shards folding by clefts the suddenly severed, once firmly fully whole halves of Helga's heart, unweaving themselves in lightning chorus lancing long and inevitable.

Wounding words were never written so prettily as prose put in proper airs as the breathing heaved out in shiver-whispers by Arnold, sky blue and true and simple, strong: _I was engaged to Lila._

By oath and by vow the purest principle of affectionate amity shoved asunder in shadow forms. All created could crumble within this verse, words worn as proof against weapons of cruelty and envy. And he, oathesome and long of promise and form, architect of the phrase within the stirring complex cavity of her heart. None nulled the nimble nighted roar of her rarely reared unburdened umbral love, than the swung cudgel cunningly kept secret until the swing came round: _I was engaged to Lila._

Currents swift and terrible trembled through her tin limbs, held at akimbo angles awkward and angry to her nature, a furious form thrown to accessory of motion in the swirling nebula of calculated chaos of her stride, so suddenly stilted. Stumbling, shaking, stupefied, Helga held reality in shapes abstract and awful in her awareness, tenuous tenebrous and trembling at the edges of vision and experience. Lines crossing and plaid striped lights scissored the gaps, obscuring the path her twitching trembling limbs hurtled her headlong down with disregard to dangers.

Mind a furor, uncabled, jacked out of reason into lower awarenesses, deeper in the rolling round winters of thought, senses and sensation simply ceased to make sense. Wrestling tumble in the deeper trenches of panic, theorycrafting, woolgathering, a slave trade in struggle to simply _understand._

_Massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre! Riot riot riot riot riot! Hell hell hell HELL HELL __**HELL**__! _

Torturous thoughts swiveled from ear to ear, bouncing back through her eyeballs and pushing out tears, foaming at the breakers of eyelids squeezed in pain to see, waves crashing in agony foam through forest of thick lashes caked, mascaraed, fashioned to please. Dark rivers ran down features curled in hate, pushing through creases of rictus torment, teeth bared in junkyard threat.

Upside down reality squashed and sat on the limned edges of thought, pushing through inescapable gravity the hideous memory of the meteoric pain of _'I was engaged to Lila."_

_I am in Hell, I am in Hell, this is Hell, I am in Hell._

Every microscopic filament and incorporated shard of her tall, crooked form shuddered against the hated phrase, coherent frequency of "NO" reverberating, river-ran through, coursing the catastrophe of dim, dark, umbral denial she begged so prettily to be untrue.

_What do I do, what do I do? What am I? Where is this? This is Hell._

Grotesque grip of giddy grim, clutched at abdomen warmed by alms, sacred communion calmed within cornucopic sea of fertility, a holy offering still warm, hot, plasmatic and white, white, white, still within, _still within_, so messily forgotten and now the reminder, the clamor and the call of union recently yoked, many times over in passion and in need. Still within, still within, still within!

O, to be freed and washed of this wretched stuff of life _still within her!_

Tumult of the soul, oh urchin, greedy in all forms, grappling with the insides, like a diamond mine, paid for in blood many times over for a preciousness, a valued gift, a ransom too high. Helga, sickened to nausea, overwhelmed by the hostage of herself she paid for the privilege of Arnold, wished and wishing for an oblivion of the self.

_Unmake me! May the fleshy forms of my fingers dig through this petty pink barrier of skin and unravel every vein and capillary woven in scripture of his name! Unsex me, rid me of this gender and this figure built cell by cell to compliment his, tear from me this womb and these pillars of life at my hips that sing and bear fruit for anything less than myself! Scoop free my marrow, pluck out every hair, rid me of these breasts, my teeth, these eyes, this nose, these limbs, tear them free, unmake me! Unmake this that is Helga! Unsing the song that hummed me to breathing, if every breath thereafter has been in harmony for him! I am an obscenity, a filth, a dowry for a Liar Prince, a Beggar in Bridal Dress!_

How does one reject that which defines yourself? If what is in your soul you find hateful and obscene, if the very weave of the fiber of your being is a loathsome, abhorrent needle in the skin, what else is there but to destroy everything, and hope that there are enough pieces left in the aftermath to rebuild something recognizable.

Helga spiraled into herself, pounding feet with pendulous purpose on concrete cold and uncaring, pushing herself towards the ugly rim of some awful horizon of tomorrow, the navigated hunting paths of a Neolithic, savage time and place of brutal messes and blood, entrails, meat, bone, viscera, _corpse._

_Reject me from this hateful Earth! O Gravity, reverse your prideful course and cease your inevitable pressing of my wretched form! Hurtle me bodily, my silhouette aflame with the speed of this ejection, relativistic speeds stretching me thin and infinite, until the bonds of my essence snap successfully and I am rent apart as I blur past the lonely edges of remote solar systems! In this lonely neighborhood between stars, may I freeze and may the eons see my atoms depart from one another until I am Gone! Helga Geraldine Pataki!_

Bounding, braying in madness and wroth of wrinkled wounded affection, a massive ribbed and boney apparition of some distant specter's past looming in impenetrable silence where a shadow should stalk behind her, Helga came by instinct or by miserable fate to the very position in space where once a little blonde boy of immeasurable kindness and light blinked quasar streams of white and silvery starlight cream, the moon, the little flavor of flame and honorable piety to goodness gave to Helga her Heart.

Drenched as by a flood of hate sweat, shivering with fury and pain, Helga stared at the bow-topped reflection of that distant past in the street-front window, now Woman, now fully Made Whole by the stirring of something unnamable she shared with that Other.

The contents of her stomach pushed themselves painfully past her teeth, she bent double and a miserable shriek pulling with that emptying spill. That gruesome bile sputtered and spat from the open wound of her mouth, so recently kissing around Arnold's body, so recently a red wet flower pressing love into the warmth of a chest she spent a lifetime wanting, contained within it every last ounce of kindness in her heart for Arnold Shortman and Lila Sawyer. Every brutal heave was the verse of a prayer to curse them dead.

Helga Pataki wiped her mouth, renewed and made unwhole, broken into what may someday reassemble and shamble into a shape resembling the _H.G.P._ of a distant yesterday, and stared at the empty creature that shook, thin and skeletal, in the mirrored reflection of the street window, fogged by the heat of her expulsive explosive self-execution.

* * *

Arnold held the biting cold ice pack onto his face, standing dumbstruck and numb in the quiet gloom of the kitchen. Helga had gone, a terrible storm of fury from the building. He heard her pained shrieking, inarticulate and wordless, echoing down the street for blocks until the din of traffic drowned it out in the extreme distance.

He had never seen anyone so angry and _hurt._ He'd never imagined such fury. Words and thoughts escaped him, and he merely stood shirtless in the empty spaces of the kitchen, waiting in between his heart beats to make sure it wouldn't stop.

Within the honest heart of himself, Arnold knew he deserved the rancor and violence he withered under from Helga. Hideous regret and guilt had piled in him, mounting impressive peaks of outlandish nightmare with which he was resigned to clash himself against in an endless Mea Culpa. From the moment he betrayed his true heart for the appeasement of another's grand fantasy, he set himself down a path of false righteousness. Now there were two women in ruins because of the clumsy, too-naive fumblings of an ocean of good intentions and a hearth built of empathy over restraint.

Arnold sat in the kitchen chair of his youth, trembling from the adrenaline crash and the nauseating pain of a bruised cheek bone. Her strike was true, but had just barely missed a critical structure that would have ruined his face, perhaps permanently. The blue bulge of the ice pack stank of rubber and Freon, but dulled the angry heated throb of the fateful impact enough that he could manage to move his jaw.

_How did this happen?_

Arnold knew full _well_ how it happened. It had been his hand on the blade that cut and severed the bonds they painstakingly, fearfully exposed themselves to build. Months ago, when we squatted in front of Lila's wheelchair and made a promise neither he nor his spirit had the capacity to keep. An empty promise as meaningless as the wind it took to speak it, but bullying and bowling over everything in its calamitous path like a Jovian hurricane many planets in scale. None were totally blameless, none escaped unscathed without a morsel of blame pinned to their vests, displayed. Lila was just as shakily aggrieved and guilty to him, asking of him an impossibility, crunching him to her wounded body and daring to utter _forever._ Helga hoarded blame; within the atomic furnace of her stellar fusion heated heart, unforgiving and unyielding, an avalanche of flame named _Envy _penetrated the shrine to each other they built with their bodies.

_Her open mouth in passion._

Selfish, sensual thoughts of sensations ghostly and recent invaded the trauma of the naked now. Helga had done things with and to him that even an active imagination would merely play at recreating; never had he lost himself in the exuberant joy of another, and never could he imagine anything as profoundly important to his soul. Like the unformed blade of some ancient smith, they were folded together, then hammered into one shape in thousands of repetitions. She was the forge and the water that quenched their heat. He was the hammer and the unmoving anvil. Working in whirlwinds, flesh melded, Arnold and Helga had touched the lights within themselves together, daring for that unspeakable spark to close the gap between their individualities by means of a love so hot and pure it was _elemental._

And in the wake of such a sacred ritual, a hymn finally joined by two voices in microscopically perfect harmony, the hideous blemish of the mistaken past profaned every space and corner of their shared temple of worship. Every Icon was desecrated. Every Image blasphemed. All forms of Truth in the hallowed halls gone.

What was left to salvage? What even could be done? Was there even some alchemy of effort that could miraculously transmute the dense and lifeless lead of this corpse of a thing into the vibrant living gold they found together again?

Drunk thoughts, exhausted images of a bleak future alone in San Lorenzo taunted him. Squeezing his eyes shut, Arnold struggled to seek answers against the galaxy of flashes of lights against his eyelids, the apparitions of sight lit in defiance against the backdrop of willful blindness. What writing on these inner walls could be shone upon by those haunting motes, those shapeless dancing forms of imagined visions? What was within his heart except the false wisdom of a too-old man called Good, who saw all his works crumble to ruin and naught in the end? What victory in this bleak and blasted wreckage, despaired Arnold, could bring something resembling a repaired and healthy tomorrow?

The absolute lunacy of accepting another human being into your heart, and placing them within your identity, and rebuilding the walls around yourself to accommodate this new shared existence, and changing the locks so that they could come and go as they please, and nodding and saying _yes this is how I wished to live_, and pushing every nervous fear and nightmarish anxiety of betrayal or abandonment or-worst of all-apathy down into the basements of thought where they could not ever dare to disturb you, and living knowing the storm is coming every day and doing _absolutely nothing _to guard against its destructive passage, and simply _trusting_ that _everything will be all right with them in this piece of you now_, is a naked bravery of exceptional stupidity and the single most important facet of the shared existence in human experience; without this conscious insanity, executed against yourself, what would be left except billions of scared strangers simply waiting to die?

And so Arnold, struggling with his own betrayer's heart, resolved to discover what, if anything was to be done about Helga.

* * *

Helga collided with the room when she entered it, frightening Brian into dropping the glass of water he was drinking, the concussive force of her re-entry into a Human space blasting everything around them with titanic calamity. Eyes hot with rage, the prime, elemental Helga wildfired against the walls of their apartment, the glass-tearing pitch of her shriek splitting the seams of their enclosed ceiling sky.

Helga, galvanized by this new vibration discovered in incoherent, indecipherable agony, vibrated the very air around her with this fever of fresh broken identity. Extreme fragility laced throughout with iron rebar, a lattice of exquisite construction and permanent strength, an Eiffel Tower of herself, shot through full of holes yet standing tall and proud and iconic. Brian was electrified by the verve of her effervescent, manic exultations. She barely noticed his presence, for what is a man to a goddess but one of countless others? In the terror-cadence of her heart, which beat in wild defiance of the hideous criminal injuries that rent it in twain, what room was there for the petty mewling existence of a mortal man extruding his unwanted irritant _self _into the perfect calamity of her newfound spirit?

Colors never seemed to touch her as she floated in speeds too fast to track to take him.

Brian held helpless hands in protest against her, struggling with laughably pathetic strength of a single human being against the all-consuming, unstoppable juggernaut of her rage hurt. Helga laughed his folly into his mouth. Resisting the kiss of a horned beast, stepping blood-slicked and gore-flecked into the innocent wood of some callipygian nymph to wrest that innocence away, was as laughably impossible as asking tomorrow not to come.

His blood filled her mouth as he filled her teeth. She became dizzy at the taste of it, teeth painted with the rushing copper water of life. When Helga parted him from her, she dropped her head back and laughed, trophy of her viciousness drooling in scarlet down her cheek, then jaw, then a swift line down the swan's curve of her neck. To fill her teeth with this eager prey, leaping as a frightened rabbit accidentally into the pursuing jaws of a wolf, to taste the sour tang of fear in the flesh and the sharp note of pain in the blood, and to conquer this moment, to reckon it _hers_, and no one else's, that is what rolled laughter from her throat. That is what had her throw Brian headlong away from her, a snarl of disgust escaping her like a beast.

Into the nest she stalked. Her feathers were mottled and molded, and she had the mind to correct them into shining silver brilliance again.

She heard the coughing, the dragging, and the spitting of the man she marked behind her, Brian folding his limbs under himself for purchase, struggling to rise to the sink and spit the black clot of scabrous blood she sheared out of his tongue. A disastrous song hummed itself in her blood-smeared lips as she regarded the pathetic inch-high reflection of the creature she _used to be _staring frightened at her in the mirror. In no time, this wretched, unwanted vision would be exercised from her imperious gaze, and only the majesty of this new, royal flesh would shine forth, a terrible radiance. All powerful. Without form or boundaries. Untouchable by the weapons of Man. Unharmed by Arnold, and invincible to Him.

Hands orchestrated a chrysalis symphony of change, cascading the harsh astringencies of bleach through the gold wheat of her hair.

Color drained from her, washing down the drain every happy yellow she ever knew.

A bath so hot she blistered scoured every cell he had ever touched from her skin.

Helga stepped from the nest, renewed, different, savage and beautiful and full of predator's grace. Brian watched her, appropriately fearful of the Lioness stalking him in circles through their shared spaces. The scent of sex clung to the air. Blood tinged this fog, Brian's blood, spilled unwillingly and gulped by both hunter and victim in shared communion: of Brian's blood they both tasted, and now she would taste his flesh.

Pressing into his space, molding the heated and raw and pink form of herself against the weak shape of a man, Helga willed his passion into fullness. A delighted hand touched him, eyes full of lightning and dark with the hunt. Brian offered up the moan he had held for seventeen years, a pretty gift to the goddess that commanded his flesh into compliance.

His hand pressed against her. He struggled to push her away.

Helga's heart stopped, then exploded into murderous fearful beating.

Sick panic rose with tsunami suddenness within her. The Sun Goddess' skin shed. Peeled away, it left The Girl naked, afraid, trembling, rejected _again_ by the weak hands of _men._

Unspeaking, Helga retreated to her room, no longer a nest but a cage. Curling in the meaningless safety of the bed empty of Arnold, Helga's tortured heart begged for quietude and oblivion. She wanted to recede, to have the corners of her vision darken and retract until only a pinprick of light remained, and to have her hearing roar with quiet until her ears rang, and to feel the annihilation of a dreamless sleep drape her into nothingness. She prayed for this. She prayed to a nameless form she gave no shape to take Today from her, and keep Tomorrow for the bargain.

At last, sleep came.

* * *

Arnold stood suddenly, brought to the present from unpleasant memory by the persistent rapping knock of someone at the front door. He was not expecting anyone, and the small percussion was too _gentle _to be Helga. He set the ice pack down on the table, walking briskly to the front door. Swinging it open, the concerned faces of Phoebe and Gerald looked up at him from the stoop, apparently unsurprised by the state he found himself in.

He stared at them silently for some time, his face a passive expression of antipathy.

"Arnold," Phoebe started, and Arnold walked away from the entrance, leaving the door open. He didn't feel like talking - his face hurt too much, for one - but he knew that they had something important to tell him, and answers for questions he intended to ask them.

The two of them stepped tentatively into the kitchen, silently watching Arnold, shirtless, refresh the ice pack with new cubes. He didn't try to be quiet about rummaging in the ice bin in the freezer, feeling that this tiny tumult was enough to express his exasperation.

Phoebe sat at the table, visibly searching for the words to say to her friend. Arnold sat across from her, leaning back in the chair, holding the ice pack to his swelling bruised face. Watching her.

She finally started to speak.

"Arnold, we understand that you broke off your prior engagement with Lila." Silence. She pressed on. "We also understand that your informed Helga of the same former arrangement. I'm guessing she did...that."

"Shit man, you okay?" Gerald couldn't hold his tongue any longer, the tension in the air between the old friends palpable and suffocating.

"Helga nearly took my head off. I'm pretty sure she cracked my cheekbone. It's a good thing I know how to take a punch the right way, or we'd be doing this in the hospital."

His two friends winced. He found himself feeling oddly hostile to the gesture.

"She tore out of here in a frenzy and told me to never speak to her again."

"Wow, that bad, huh?" Gerald clicked his tongue, crossing his arms in front of him. "She sure doesn't pull any punches."

Arnold just looked at Gerald, unsure if that was intended to be a joke.

"Well," Phoebe interjected, "what is important right now is what we do next. The next steps are critical, and time-sensitive, we don't have much time to act before-"

"I'm sorry," Arnold interrupted her. "Next steps? Act? You've lost me, Phoebe. I intend to honor her request. She sealed it pretty convincingly. It was _hand delivered_."

Gerald and Phoebe blushed at the admonishment. Still, Phoebe pressed on.

"Arnold I am sure that if you logically look at this situation, you'll see that it is salvageable and a product of passions inflamed and let loose without restraint. If cooler heads prevail, and with a little luck, we may be able to reverse the damage that has been done."

Arnold felt a little ill at the thought of approaching Helga again. He'd never forget the chilling look in her eyes when she demanded he never speak to her again. She was deadly serious.

"Phoebe, I appreciate you wanting to help, I really do, but this isn't going to be something we can just talk out."

"Listen to yourself, man. You're _always_ the one that says we can just talk things out." Gerald sat next to Arnold when he made his point.

"It's not that I'm not willing to talk, it's that she is violently opposed to the idea. If I could just explain myself, maybe she would understand and we could move past this. But you didn't see her, Gerald. You either, Phoebe. It was _bad._"

Phoebe and Gerald looked at each other with worry. The look concerned Arnold, but also made him suspicious.

"What? What do you two know?"

Phoebe slowly pulled her phone from her purse, swiping the screen a few times and then showing Arnold an image on the high definition screen. It was Helga, staring at herself in a storefront window, haggard, wet with sweat, her eyes occluded with blind berserker fury.

A caption over the top read, in white block lettering, "LOOKS LIKE THE DATE DIDN'T GO SO WELL LOL"

Arnold narrowed his not swollen eye and grabbed her phone. "Who sent this? What is this?!"

Gerald sighed and pointed at the phone. "An unknown number sent that picture to me, to Phoebe, and we're pretty sure everybody from PS118. Including Helga, is my guess."

Blitzkrieg confusion toppled Arnold's self-control. He felt himself start to hyperventilate. Who could be mocking her? Mocking _him?_ And _why?_

"It's Fuzzy Slippers, is my guess." Gerald held eye contact with Arnold when he shot him a confused, disbelieving look. "He's the only one well connected enough in Hillwood to get a picture like this and distribute it so quickly. We got this text maybe twenty, thirty minutes ago? And came here right away when we did."

"_Fuzzy Slippers?_ The fake person you made up for your stories?"

Phoebe shook her head, taking her phone back from Arnold's still outstretched hand. "Fuzzy Slippers is a real person. However, Gerald and myself were never able to puzzle out their true identity."

"How? That was all _real?_"

"Well, sort of," Gerald started. "It's a really long story, but the basic gist of it is that, Fuzzy Slippers was an urban legend himself for a long time. I'd hear a rumor or a tall tale and it'd have his name attached. Hell, sometimes the stories would be about people we knew, sometimes it'd even be about _us_, but I never heard nothing about the actual person behind the name until middle school."

"Why? What happened then?" Arnold was amazed this was the first he'd ever heard of this story. What else was Gerald keeping secret?

"Fuzzy Slippers started to move _against_ folks. Rumors started getting uglier, then there was evidence of some private stuff getting leaked, and people started getting really hurt. Like, real hurt. Nadine moved away it got so bad. Rhonda had to lay real low for a bit."

"You act like this all came to an end? What stopped it?"

"Well, we did." Gerald flashed a grin. "Really, it was mostly an accident. Fuzzy Slippers got sloppy. Phoebe and I were on their trail for a long time, years, trying to map out their movements based on the timeline of secret events that were getting outed. We even set up a sting."

"It was Gerald's idea. We decided to purposefully rendezvous in a somewhat conspicuous, but still only privately known to ourselves location and...begin our romantic relationship. We set the location along a known path of travel that we had established as a pattern for Fuzzy Slippers...our intent was to catch them in the act, or at least catch one of their informants."

"What we got was even better." Gerald pulled something out of his back pocket, setting it on the table. Arnold recognized the book Gerald had let him borrow to find Helga. The little black book with all the secrets of Hillwood carefully scribed.

"_That's_ how you got this? Fuzzy Slippers gave it to you?"

"Nah man. Dropped it. We almost saw 'im, and started chasing the sonovabitch down. I don't know if they dropped it on purpose to lose us or if it was an accident. Either way, it stopped everything. I mean, dead stop. Fuzzy Slippers _vanished _man, just gone into thin air. All traces gone. The scent dried up. So we stopped chasing. It's been a long time since we heard a damn thing from Fuzzy Slippers."

Arnold set the ice pack down on the table, digesting this story slowly. "So what, you think that they came back, specifically to harass Helga and me? Why? Who would want to do that?"

Phoebe calmly put her hand on Arnold's. "We're not sure. We very carefully eliminated the possibility that Fuzzy Slippers was _anyone_ from PS118. I went over the data myself. Everyone from PS118 had something _extremely terrible_ happen to them because of Fuzzy Slippers. _Everyone._ It's someone from the outside, and someone who is particularly invested in all of our personal inner lives. My theory is that your return somehow inspired them to return to activity. Unraveling the meaning behind this move will be the key to discovering their identity and making them stop for good."

"Why me though? Why Helga?"

"You're the most prominent target. What better way to announce your arrival than to capitalize on this disaster between you two? Everyone at PS118 will know that he is back, and capable of hurting us again."

Exhaustion permeated every cell in Arnold's body. Emotionally exhausted from the roller coaster ride of breaking things off with Lila, then the miracle of the party and Helga's show, and then the live-defining heart-trauma of reconnecting to her, followed by that final hideous moment when she left him, stricken, Arnold felt incapable of handling this new development. It was most certainly unwelcome. His body ached; Helga had not been easy on him tonight, at any juncture. What was left of courage in him felt vestigial and remote to his access. If facing Fuzzy Slippers required that he harness his heart, he'd need time to find a new way to harness it.

A slow, molasses crawl thought of sweet sickness grew inside him. What he found most repugnant of it was that only he could have the perspective to think it, as abhorrent as it was. He voiced this awful thing, hoping to dispel it by means of speaking the ridiculousness of it aloud.

"It might be Lila."

If they were surprised or shocked, Phoebe and Gerald couldn't be seen expressing it physically. Maybe Arnold was too exhausted to notice the nuances of their expressions any longer.

"It's not possible," Phoebe finally said.

"Yeah, you're right," Arnold admitted, relieved that he could forget he thought it.

"It can't be her, because she has been hurt by Fuzzy Slippers maybe more than anyone else," Phoebe explained further.

Arnold rubbed his eyes. He felt like finding this Fuzzy Slippers person and giving them ten times the treatment Helga had given him.

"Well whoever it is, we'll need to talk about what to do tomorrow morning. I'm too tired to keep this up tonight. Too much happened."

"Agreed, a fresh start tomorrow is just what we need. Why don't you meet us at the diner?"

"The diner? Again?" Gerald sounded annoyed. "Why don't we meet him here? I'm tired of pancakes."

"Does that work for you, Arnold?" Phoebe sounded patient.

He rubbed his cheek with his fingers, pressing into the sore spot of contact. He really just wanted to sleep and end this nightmare of a day. He wanted to see Helga. He wanted to hold her again, and to apologize, and make her understand.

"Just tell me you've got a plan." He sounded desperate enough to surprise himself with the force of his pleading.

"We do. It's a good plan."

"A helluva plan, buddy. We've got something big right around the corner. You, Phoebe, and myself, all going with Helga to her dad's beach house next weekend."

Arnold didn't have the energy to be surprised anymore. "Of course that's the plan. That's exactly what we need, cramming Helga in a beach house with me, the guy she just decked. Perfect. Listen, I'm too tired right now to worry about how that will possibly happen or work. I just need to sleep. I'll see you two in the morning."

Arnold saw his friends out the door, politely but firmly refusing to hear any more details of this new development. They were crazy. He felt simultaneously blessed and cursed to have such insanity on his side.

When he tenderly laid his head on his pillow, still smelling of Helga's faint perfume and the bodily scent of her, the coital mingling of hers and his, Arnold immediately fell into a fitful, troubled sleep, full of dreams of a sun goddess that melted his wax wings.

* * *

Helga's eyes cracked open, slivers of darkness of her room betraying that it was still evening, or at least early morning. Something nudged her weakly, no doubt the selfsame nuisance that pestered her awake moments before. Bleary-eyed, exhausted to the extreme, and only dimly remembering the tumult of her evening thus far, Helga pushed her naked form up into sitting, and peered down at the side of her bed in the darkness to assess whether she meant to violently abjure the vexation daring her to break slumber.

Brian shook gently in the darkness, holding his hand over his mouth, darkness slick over his fingers and face, skin a pale canvas that moonlight shone silvery white.

Helga's mind awoke to full alertness at the thick smell of blood coming from Brian, mingling with the sharp tang of the taste of it, ghostly reminder of something terrible she had done to her loyal friend.

_You can't even control your anger_, a cruel voice spat at her from the corners of her mind. Helga's hand flipped the lights on in a flash, brilliantly illuminating the darkness of her room, shining her attentions to the chaos of her previous passage, laid out in gruesome diorama before her very eyes. Those same watering crystal blue eyes held contact with Brainy's, now rolling and fluttering into unconsciousness.

She had wounded him most viciously. She recalled biting into the fat flesh of his tongue, drawing blood. The sick memory of _drinking_ this made her ill, and willed up the contents of her stomach onto her bed, mostly a sticky web of mucous and the brown clots of what she had drank from Brainy in her fury.

Clothes found themselves on her, she wasn't sure how, and she was belting Brian into the passenger seat of his van, trying not to panic.

_The reward for your loyal love is a lifetime of pain,_ that sinister feeling called to her again.

"Shut up!" She shrieked. Brian's eyes opened a little, and he turned his head to regard her in the driver's seat of his van, confused.

_Great, now you're talking to yourself, Helga. But for real. _It reminded her of the time Arnold had left. That terrible time, filled with violence and ugly memory, and hurt. What had brought her to self-control had been lashing out and hurting herself. Now, it seems, someone she loved dearly had taken her place in her stead. She pressed her foot harder on the accelerator, hoping to outrun her conscience.

She fireman carried Brian into the minor emergency, helping him fill out the paperwork and giving him water to drink. He held on to consciousness for the majority of the wait, holding onto her hand as well, and holding his mouth.

_I can't believe I did this because of Arnold._ She was certain Brian would never want to speak to her again, once he could start speaking.

_I did this because Arnold __betrayed__ me,_ she realized with a sick shock. _He asked Lila to marry him. Somewhere, in some stinking jungle, the same jungle he told me he loved me and kissed me for the first time, Arnold got on bended knee and presented a precious ring, sick with butterflies and hoping for a future with someone __else.__ Not just anyone, Lila Sawyer._

Helga felt an awful thing clawing at the edges of her awareness, threatening to pull itself lurching into strength again, scrabbling and clawing at the cage she hemmed it in. A fury in her with overwhelming strength begged for release again. She felt so _good_ when she let go. The violence in her felt _amazing_ when she let it loose, and she didn't feel so weak and powerless any longer. Arnold robbed her of all her agency, he took everything from her that made her feel normal.

_But he did say 'was,' _a small, trembling and fearful voice spoke up. She looked at Brian next to her, sleepily, weakly watching C.O.P.S. on the waiting room television. She chewed the inside of her lip nervously, unwilling to let that kernel of hope find purchase in her heart.

Brian got called and she stood up to help him. She was surprised when he stood under his own strength, shaking his head for her to not follow him in. Fear touched her, as did worry. What would he say?

His hand lifted from his mouth, and he smiled a red smile at her. "It's okay," he slurred. "I just bit my tongue."

Helga fell back into her chair, hands going over her eyes so he didn't see her start crying again. Brian didn't even blame her. He didn't even _think_ to blame her. Overwhelming guilt harried her heart, harassing it into hysterical pounding. She felt faint, and got herself a paper cup of cool water, hand trembling as she drank.

She was worried about Brian. But, she realized, she was also worried about Arnold.

_Oh god, I hit him. I really hit him. I hit him as hard as I could. I put everything behind that punch. I really hit him. I can't believe I did that, my sweet Arnold, right after I had finally confessed my truest, most tender affections and expressed them physically with you! I can't believe the exclamation point at the end of tonight's sentence is a literal punchline, delivered in fury, with an encore of nearly biting my best friend's tongue out. What a hideous beast I am, what a shambling mess of aggression and anger. What is wrong with me, that my reaction to Arnold's painful confession is to try and kill everyone? Is Arnold's broken past really so terrible?_

Helga sat with her hands in her eyes, worrying, arguing with herself, her newly silvery white hair a cascading curtain around her features.

_Can I forgive him for this? Should I? Is it possible to give up his first __engagement__ and forgive that it didn't belong to me? Do I have the required grace to forget that he's been with Lila before he was with me? Can I stomach the feel of his hands when they first felt her?_

_Can I live without him if I can't let it go?_

Helga didn't have the answers. She put everything she had into tonight's performances, the party was a massive release of ten years of pent up history and frustration. Every day of missing him was in those songs, every moment she had bitterly missed his presence calibrated in verse and harmony.

But all of that was an expression of their _past._ She didn't know what their future would look like. It didn't exactly have a good start.

_You had him, you held him in your arms. He was inside of you, and you bared your soul to him and he accepted it. Never forget this night,_ she swore to herself. It infuriated her that she was unable to remember that impossible joy without also remembering that ugly admission. She felt angry that Arnold had ruined this long-awaited connection with his stupid history with Lila.

_Maybe you can have him again._ That same little voice spoke up in her heart.

She looked up when the door opened, Brian coming out with a cleaned up smile. He slapped his prescription in her hand, taking her arm to walk to the van while she read his script.

_Vicodin. Brainy's gonna have a good time. And I can get started worrying about how I'm going to apologize to him._

After starting the van, looking over at Brian's exhausted form start to fall into sleep, Helga tentatively allowed herself to think: _And apologize to Arnold._

Despite herself, she realized, as she drove them home, she could not imagine a Helga without Arnold. The beasts within her that haunted the sacred spaces of her heart threatened to destroy her and everyone around her when she harnessed her passions, but Helga Geraldine Pataki loved Arnold Shortman, and she would just have to learn to control these violences. Nobody was perfect, not even him. There were bound to be complications. She would find a way to try to forgive the unspeakable crime of not being First.

She realized with a sad, grim determination, that loving Arnold was all she knew to do. There wasn't a next step without it being taken towards him. Somehow, someway, there would have to be reconciliation. She hoped she had it in herself to find it, and that Arnold would receive whatever apologies she could muster up.

The alternative was an oblivion she dared not name.


	10. Chapter 10 - Gun-Toting Urchins

A/N: A big thank you to all the readers that took the time to offer their frank and candid feedback on chapter nine. While I can totally see where the style and execution was jarring and maybe even an unwelcome departure from my typical prose, ultimately last chapter has some of the best prose I've ever written and I stand by it. A close fan turned me onto the literary concept of "The Dark Night of the Soul," and without meaning to that is precisely what I wrote into the story. After the false climax of chapter six and the dramatic turn of chapter seven, the dramatic and challenging and uncomfortable poetic form of chapter nine ultimately accomplished what I needed and wanted: to get you in Helga's head. It's a dramatic place to be, as some of you pointed out. :)

Chapter 10 is a grab-bag of POVs, intended to give you more back story and clarify some things.

Please R/R and follow if you like the story! This will likely be the only story I ever write at before I start something I intend to publish. Your criticism and critique gives me valuable experience in editing my work and creating believable plots. And your dedication and commitment to interest in my work gives me the confidence to keep going!

Also! I've created a tumblr blog to provide story updates/chapter progress, and to talk about my story and characterizations in general. I'll also be talking about my favorite passages I've written, and what my favorite things to write where, and in general talk about my process. If you're interested, follow me on tumblr, username Lachesis-ism.

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 10: Gun-Toting Urchins

"For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first." - Suzanne Collins

* * *

Rhonda held her hand over her mouth, too shocked to offer one of her typically snappy retorts or witty rebuttals to Lila's world-changing revelation, delivered moments ago by that very same girl in tearful, emotive confession: _she was engaged to Arnold._

Needless to say, this changed matters considerably.

Rhonda wasn't one to pay too much stock in most relationships. She'd had her hand in ruining several, in fact, and was quite proud of the fact that she had the skill and subtlety necessary to squeeze a couple's weaknesses until their bonds shattered. In her inestimably lofty opinion, any pairing that couldn't withstand her simple ministrations was doomed to part eventually anyway. It helped keep her conscience clear that she'd only ever broken up _teenage_ romances, and young love is cheap; I mean, it's _everywhere._ It can't be worth much.

But an adult betrothment, between two beautiful people with kind, nurturing souls and, as far as she knew, totally clean rap sheets? That was a rare jewel, expensive as it was needful, and she was not some emotionless _harpy_ that could so easily and effortlessly discard the significance in the binding of a gold ring studded with diamonds. The sheer ceremony _alone_ in a man, taking bended knee before his beloved, and offering up whatever lowly sum of his life he could to the girl standing before him was enough to give Rhonda significant romantic pause.

She had a soft spot for weddings, and engagements, largely because she couldn't possibly imagine herself ever accepting a proposal to _anyone_ (nobody would ever be worthy), and that made it a covetous, enviable item indeed.

"You and Arnold were _engaged?_" All she could manage was a shocked reiteration of the very statement Lila just pronounced, offered in disbelief as a question she required additional confirmation to accept.

"Yes, I'm ever so sorry to say that we were engaged to be married. We'd even set a date, oh-so romantically on _Christmas Day._ My Arnold sure knows how to woo a lady." Lila's heartbreak was audible in her recounting the story.

"D-d-details. Give me details, please, Lila, please darling, explain what you mean. I can't, this is just, I mean can you _explain _what you _mean?_" Rhonda struggled with herself. Sid stared at her from across the room, sitting shirtless against the backboard of the hotel bed. His look was quizzical. He'd heard Rhonda. The confusion was just as clear on his face as well.

"Well, I'm ever so sure I mean exactly what I said, Rhonda. Arnold asked me to marry him not so long ago, and I was just oh so happy and deliriously head-over-heels for the sweet boy that I said _yes._ And then tonight, he broke the engagement _off_, leaving me awfully confused and heartbroken."

"He did _what_?" Rhonda felt herself grow immeasurably angry. Arnold, that _dog_. He broke off his engagement to sweet Lila Sawyer so that he could play around with nasty, impossible _Helga._ On what planet did that make sense? By what authority did he ruin a life so that he could ruin his own with Pataki, of all people? She felt sickened that she had helped the couple come together tonight, even getting up on stage to shake her _moneymaker_ for God's sake.

"Yes, I'm afraid he broke off the engagement just a few hours ago. Right before he left for some party."

"Yes, the party. I was there, with him. Do you know about Helga?"

"Helga?" Lila sounded a little surprised. "Well...I know that she had never written him back any letters, and we've talked many many times at great length about his ever so unresolved issues of abandonment with Helga. I suspect it was a simple transference of his feelings of abandonment from his parents, once he found them. Arnold never agreed. I assumed he would probably attempt to get the closure he needed from Helga as part of his visit to Hillwood...but that's all I know about _Helga._ Why? What do you know? What happened?"

Rhonda listened with increasing fury and impatience. Arnold didn't even tell his _fiancée _that he was off _cherry picking _back home with Pataki. She honestly couldn't believe how out of character it was for Arnold. She'd even _kissed_ him, the snake.

"Arnold and Helga left the party together." No use in hiding the truth from her. Lila deserved better.

A long pause of silence. Lila didn't seem to be on the line, until Rhonda was about to check if the line had disconnected and Lila finally spoke.

"It was bound to happen eventually, I suppose." The saddened resignation in her voice killed Rhonda.

Rhonda _liked_ Lila. Loved her, even. Lila and Rhonda had been very good friends in the past, and before all the ugliness with Fuzzy Slippers, practically bosom buddies. Sisters from another mister. Rhonda kicked herself for not keeping in touch with Sawyer after she left; the busy demands of ruling a High School had simply taken her attentions elsewhere. The fact that she hadn't even kept Lila's phone number was unforgivably sloppy of her.

"But Lila, you reached out to me specifically with a request for help. You said only I could do it. What is it?"

"Ah, well, it seems you already helped me. I was hoping you could keep an eye on Arnold for me...make sure he didn't get into any trouble before I get to Hillwood."

"You're coming here?" Rhonda couldn't imagine Lila now, much older than her teenage self and so much more mature. It would be a sight.

"As soon as I am able to make arrangements with a hotel with wheelchair access."

"_Wheelchair_ access? What in the blazes are you talking about, Lila?"

A sad tale indeed unfolded, a tale of Lila following Arnold bravely into the jungles, of risking her life and paying the price of her healthy legs to save him from a deadly fall. Rhonda couldn't believe her ears. It sounded like an exceptionally complex teenage _drama_, not very much like real life.

"Once I was injured, Arnold became very sullen and, well, distant. I assumed it was because he was ever so nervous to ask me to marry him, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was because being with me just reminded him of how much he wanted to be with Helga instead."

"He doesn't deserve your kindness, Lila. Not if any of this is true."

"I am afraid all of it is," she added. "Every ugly word."

Rhonda glanced at Sid; he looked back at her, only hearing half of the conversation but visibly shaken nonetheless. He shook his shoulders, pantomiming that he had no idea what to do.

Rhonda knew what to do, however.

"I _can_ help you, Lila." Rhonda's voice had a determined cast.

"How? I'm ever so certain what's done has been done."

"Maybe, maybe not. I'll find out, and fast. If there's anyone that can help you in Hillwood, it's me. I'm just going to verify some things first, but then I will be your eyes and ears in Hillwood. I can't _believe_ Arnold, and Helga is no better."

"Well, _maybe_ there's one _teensy_ thing you can do for me." A pregnant pause filled the spaces between Rhonda's guesses as to what she might mean. "Just find out how things went after they left the party."

"That's already on my to-do list, Lila. Don't worry. You're in good hands."

The two girls parted ways and Rhonda sat pensively at the little dark wood desk opposite the hotel bed, mind racing.

_Lila leaves Hillwood after the Fuzzy Slippers incident. Years later, her parents pass. Arnold leaves San Lorenzo to spend time with her. They both go back to San Lorenzo. Arnold falls down a mountain or something, and then Lila gets put in a wheelchair saving him. They come back to her farm, where Arnold proposes to her. Arnold comes back to Hillwood. Phoebe and Gerald organize this big party with Helga as the main focus. Arnold breaks up with Lila, and hooks up with Helga. That's about it, I think._

She pressed her fingers into her eyes.

"What's up, baby? Everything okay?" Sid's genuine concern would have touched her heart were she not busy.

"No, not in the slightest. Arnold's _not_ the perfect Angel we all remember, and I aim to test this little fling of his with Helga."

"This all sounds pretty uncool of him. I bet it's all a misunderstanding. It doesn't seem like Arnold."

"No, it certainly doesn't. I need eyes on the street, Said." She turned around to face him. "Get the word out to your peons. Anyone sees Pataki, I want pictures of her. Maybe we'll get lucky and get her mid walk of shame."

"Sure, baby. But why?" Sid was obediently cutting a fresh line for her. She adored his anticipation of her needs usually. Now she just found it slightly irksome.

"We're going to resurrect the ghost of Fuzzy Slippers, and see if we can't scare up some trouble. I want to sow a little chaos in Arnold and Helga's world right now, and see what pops up."

"_Fuzzy Slippers? _That guy the fucked with everybody's lives? Are you sure you wanna make people think he's back?"

"Just a little bogeyman to keep everyone honest and nervous. I get the feeling that Phoebe and Gerald knew a _lot_ more about this whole situation than they let on, and I aim to get answers."

Rhonda drummed her fingers on the wood table impatiently.

_Now we just hope the __real__ Fuzzy Slippers doesn't notice, or this is going to get ugly._

* * *

Lila set the phone down, a soft smile on her lips. It was done. The pieces were put into place.

One of the things she loved the most about taking the mantle of Fuzzy Slippers was how effortless the role was. She was so well liked, respected, and trusted by the kids of PS118 that there was virtually no secret kept safe from her ears. People came to her as a natural course when they had something dreadful to hide.

It was what made it a natural fit when she took the job from the previous owner. She had appreciated the subtle, hands-off approach he had taken before her, spreading fun rumors and tall tales to excite his friends in secret.

She had other uses for the role.

At first, it was just something to keep her busy when Arnold left. She found that she missed the constant attention and friendship from the sweet boy more than she had anticipated or expected. A vacuum of kindness made itself present in her heart, and over many months this vacancy became a bitterness she could not articulate. It troubled Lila when she would feel angry with the people of PS118 for moving along as if their lives weren't noticeably worse without him around. It was a disturbing realization that she felt jealous of the time they had with him before he left and had suddenly seemed to take for granted. It felt vulgar to her preteen heart that such a wonderful boy could vanish from their lives and nobody seemed to _notice._

This wasn't the full truth, however. She knew that now, as an adult. Regrets piled in her uselessly, and Lila never had time for old discarded dirty laundry. Her past was imperfect. She was cruel, when things began to overwhelm her. She shocked herself with her ability to attack. The pieces of herself that floated in a sea of frustration had coalesced by the time she was fourteen into a secretly vicious huntress. Weaknesses and fault in her friends were punished immediately with exposure. Guilt for what she was doing was outweighed by the outrage that they tried to escape the costs of their behaviors.

Everything changed when she "lost" her little book. Truthfully, it was just _one _of two redundant copies she kept in secret ciphers, two books catalogued and carefully maintained with every secret and ugly mistake of everyone she knew. If Arnold wasn't around to keep people in check with his kindness, Lila would use her kindness as a weapon to humiliate them into obedient deference to the best qualities within them her Arnold continuously had sought to draw out.

It was not a difficult transformation for her. Before her arrival at Hillwood, the cheery and sunny girl they all knew as Lila barely existed as anything except an idea. A notion that she could-_should-_start fresh with a less antagonistic existence in her new home. The farm community she left behind lost itself a gossiping, teasing, sometimes simply too-honest girl with a wide grin and knowing eyes; Hillwood earned itself the kind, patient, ever positive sun-dappled young lady with simply folded hands and a demure smile. It was a necessary change, and Arnold's unwelcome initial attentions the only wrinkle in her otherwise well executed, and indeed sincerely meant, transmutation into the Lila Sawyer PS118 knew.

Her slow reversal back to that unhappy child, an only child lonely on a large farm, too smart, too clever, too hungry for more outside the boundaries her upbringing gave her was so insidiously gradual that by the time she was running from Phoebe and Gerald it was too late. She had to stay a step ahead of them, at any cost, let everything fall apart. The only remorse inside her for the ugly things she revealed as Fuzzy Slippers to get in their way was that they had been clever enough to get close to the real answer.

"Losing" one of the copies of her book of secrets was a way out.

Once Gerald and Phoebe believed they had inflicted a mortal psychological wound on Fuzzy Slippers by getting the book, their pursuit ended so long as she kept her temptation to attack in check.

The decision to move back to her farm was posited by her father once their family finances had been finally put back in order. She had no hesitation in her saddened heart when she agreed. Hillwood was a skeleton of something to her by then. A pitiable reminder of her at her most powerful, savage and beautiful and secretly moving everything, but also of the absent feeling in her heart when she observed the friends she had come to resent together, enjoying each other's company.

Arnold was the only one she had never found fault with, and who defied even her careful scrutiny for something to disappoint her silent judgements. In his letters he waned between the admiration of the romance of adventure, to profound political declarations and sincere vows to change whatever he could with his young and not yet matured powers. He spoke to her frankly, confessing more than once his latent feelings for her, and for Helga, the confusion he felt when he wrote to her on the topic, and his hopeless hurt that Helga never saw fit to write him back. She genuinely fell in love with him, despite herself, wooed by words more wonderful than every clumsy romantic gesture he had ever attempted as children, made less hateful of herself and the memories she stacked in the attic of her heart.

She genuinely treasured him, every moment with him, and the fact she was now nearly blind drunk because he hurt her, wheeling herself to bed because of an injury she sustained on his behalf invigorated in her wounded spirit that long abandoned weaponized bitterness she incubated as a teen.

Helga had been a miscalculation. Lila had an embarrassingly large blind spot in regards to Arnold; the fact that she had wagered her shared history with Arnold, and indeed the honesty of her love, the only honest thing she had left in her, and lost the bet soured whatever genuine kindness she had gleaned from her tender affections for her former fiancée.

As she set her head, which spun with the wild and dizzying intoxication of a truly heroic amount of Bourbon for her, down on her pillow, hoisting herself up into her bed by her guidance rails, Lila swore that she would either find Arnold back in her heart and keep him there, or else destroy everything she could in Hillwood, brick by brick.

As darkness took her swirling consciousness, a lone troubling thought attempted to find purchase against the blackness of a drunken stupor. Her eyes struggled to flutter open as the idea struck her, fearfully, but Orpheus sang her sad heart to sleep before it could weave itself in the over worked tapestry of her memory.

_I can't lose as long as Brainy stays out of it, _she thought, and immediately forgot as she fell asleep.

* * *

Arnold was awake long before Phoebe and Gerald arrived at the boardinghouse. Sleep was elusive for him, coming in short bursts punctuated by the all-too-real dreams that felt more like memories of Helga, close to him, entwined, in his bed, in his mouth and heart. Arnold dressed himself in a simple peach colored tank top and jeans, walking barefoot in the cool pre-dawn quiet of the kitchen. Since it was a Saturday, most of the boarders would sleep in until they smelled some sort of breakfast cooking.

A pot of coffee, cheap and strong, was gurgling itself to life on the counter while Arnold considered his day.

He'd have to call Lila. He'd made a promise to talk to her after the party, and he kept his word. He wasn't looking forward to the conversation, imagining the soft disappointment in her voice when he recounted the explosive events of the night before.

Realistically, Arnold did not really believe he deserved either of the girls in his life. To Lila, he owed a lifetime of apologies for offering himself up to her when he didn't sincerely have himself to give away. To Helga, he owed a lifetime of apologies for letting his heart tarry too far and only recently come home, despite that always her heart was married deep to his own.

He felt too large in the kitchen, having to stoop under hanging pots and pans and bumping into the space which seemed far smaller than he remembered.

He poured himself a cup of coffee and drank it quietly until his friends arrived.

He found them too energetic and excitable for the circumstances. He knew they meant well, and he loved them dearly for their devotion in helping him settle the situation, but he also found their involvement slightly invasive. He'd lived virtually alone, relying only on himself and his parents, for over half his life now, and even though he grew up leaning on his friends and glowing in their company, the subtle differences of a multitude of isolations grew a love for solitude inside him. And so, even though he was grateful for their presence, and gladdened to be with them again, he privately, silently chafed under the over-abundant attentions so well intended.

Phoebe, always sensitive and observant, noticed the distance in his voice and the hesitance in his gaze, and quickly wrapped up their planning and discussion. Arnold would join Phoebe and Gerald and Helga at the beach house in four days, a Wednesday, and they would stay there until the following Monday. Helga's summer classes ended Tuesday, giving them the perfect window of opportunity to go have some fun together. Gerald was all smiles and suggestions about romantic interludes alone with Helga, and Phoebe, for her part, suggested that Arnold simply try to have a good time. He appreciated both sentiments, but wondered if anything other than an awkward weekend would ever come of this plan.

His friends left him to spend time alone not long after. Perhaps called by the earthy smell of coffee, Phil stalked long-legged and stiff into the kitchen not long after.

"Morning, Shortman." He moved automatically to the coffee pot, pouring himself a large cup. "Thanks for the pot, Arnold. I know this stuff's garbage, but it keeps you regular! The trains run on the schedule this stuff sets, heh."

Phil's eyes landed on Arnold's swollen, bruised cheek.

"Quite the shiner you got there. A gift from your little friend with the eyebrows?"

Arnold looked up at Phil. "How did you know?"

Phil grinned over the cup of coffee he brought to his lips, sipping it loudly. "The whole boarding house heard you two making quite the ruckus. I'd be surprised if the neighborhood watch didn't notice. Quite a mouth on that Pataki girl."

Arnold blushed at the memory of exactly what her mouth was capable of. He felt apart from his body, awkward and larger in himself than his spacial awareness told him he should occupy.

"Sorry about that, I know Helga can be a little...expressive."

"You got that right," Phil chuckled, swinging into a seat opposite his grandson. "So, why'd she sock ya? Lover's quarrel?"

"Basically. I messed up pretty bad, grandpa. Bad enough that I have two women mad at me."

Phil's eyes widened, then creased at the crows feet in a knowing smile. "Well well well, my grandson, the casanova. What a lady killer! Two women, eh?"

"Yeah, I mean, you remember Lila."

"The sweet cripple girl with freckles."

"Right, Lila, well, she and I sort of got engaged not long after the accident. And well," Arnold trailed off, hearing the absurdity of his situation as he spoke it. Phil rubbed at his dimpled, scruffy chin, fingers caressing the cleft thoughtfully.

"And so you two-timed her with the eyebrow girl? Arnold, that doesn't sound like you."

"No, it's not, and I didn't. I broke it off with Lila, because I knew things were complicated with Helga, and I didn't know what would happen while I was here. I couldn't be dishonest with either of them."

"And by 'couldn't be dishonest' means you told Pataki about being prematurely engaged and whatnot, and she clocked you a good one."

"Right." Arnold was relieved to be talking to his grandfather about this one. He might be 91, but Steely Phil was still the wisest, most clever person Arnold knew.

"Sounds like you deserved it!" Arnold's eyes widened in surprise. Phil smiled adoringly at his grandson, putting his cup of coffee down and slowly standing up, leaning heavily against his cane. "Some life lessons can only be learned the hard way, Shortman. The lesson you learned is that you can't have your cake and eat it too! Whatever you dumped pretty little miss Sawyer for, and whatever compelled you to pick up with that hellion Pataki, you were being honest with yourself. What got you _into_ this mess was the opposite. So just stick to your guns, Arnold. You got a good heart, and it generally won't steer you wrong."

"Yeah, but, Grandpa, listening to my heart is what got me into this mess to begin with."

"I didn't mean all the time! You also gotta know when to shut it up! Don't always _only_ listen to your heart, Arnold, your heart is stupid! You're liable to elope with Pataki if you do that."

"Grandpa, you're not making any sense. How am I supposed to stick to my guns but not listen to my heart?"

Phil shrugged his shoulders, walking out of the kitchen with a bit of hustle. "You got me, kiddo, but that's what you gotta do. Now excuse me, general arabica's upset the natives and there's an uprising brewing below the equator."

Arnold smiled despite himself at his grandpa's creative euphemisms, and chewed on what his grandfather advised him. Somehow he needed to make up his mistakes to both Helga and Lila, while still staying true to his values and not letting his heart override his instincts. He wasn't sure what sort of gesture he could make that could accomplish that.

He decided to leave the building for a little while, before the rest of the tenants arrived and really made his day interesting. A walk through the neighborhood would do him good, he reasoned, and get his mind moving forward. Slipping on some shoes, he left the boarding house into the muggy late summer morning, walking briskly towards nothing in particular.

The neighborhood had changed, of course. Almost all the landmarks of his childhood were gone. He moved randomly through the streets, crossing when he felt like it, and turning down alleys when the shade looked inviting. Somehow this brownian course took him through there required turns to bring him to Gerald field.

It was still a field, he was surprised to see, although now it was a proper field made up to hold an actual baseball game. He approached the chainlink fence encircling it, leaning against the rough aluminum and steel and remembering all the hassle he and his friends went through to clear this little section of space out. All the games they played here, all the adventures and tribulations he and his friends shared. Nostalgia, huge and sticky on his mind, overwhelmed his heart, and made him miss his friends with a sudden sweet melancholy.

His eyes fell on home plate, and he recalled the ghostly image of Helga in her pink dress, squatting behind it to call his pitches. She was an amazing catcher, always able to pull out his best pitch every throw. They were natural partners on the field. It just felt right to throw his fastball into her mitt back then. Now he knew why, of course, but back then it was a puzzling, confusing feeling that made him giddy and excited to play a game of baseball with her, but made him feel awkward and strange afterwards.

How long had he been in love with Helga, without realizing it?

Arnold looked at home plate again, getting an idea. Maybe there wasn't a way he could verbally apologize to Helga. Maybe the only way he could communicate his regret was through action. Maybe what Helga needed to see was his own version of her band's performance, a dramatic and visually and emotionally arresting confession of the soul.

While Arnold didn't have the musical talent to put on a show for her, and he was no poet, he _did_ know one way he could wordlessly communicate with her. Smiling to himself, he turned to briskly walk back home. He was immensely grateful that he had opted to bring his gear with him for his visit. It wasn't a _foolproof _plan, but it was the best idea he'd had yet.

Arnold Shortman set out to right the wrongs he had committed, more sure of himself than he had been in years.

* * *

Standing on the stoop of Helga and Brainy's apartment building, Phoebe inventoried the braveries she had found in herself over the years as Helga's best friend, girding herself with this emotional steel to prepare against Helga. Both experience and tangible evidence showed her that the events transpired in the past 24 hours were less than ideal, and had exacted a significant pain toll on her dear friend. What riddled chaos she unleashed in knee-jerk defense against this awful life, Phoebe had no way of knowing, but all her time at Helga's side told her that there would be collateral damage.

She was buzzed in by someone after she used the intercom to announce herself, stepping into the building tentatively. The stairs to their second floor apartment never seemed to intimidatingly long and tall as they did now. Phoebe was no coward, but there was painful uncertainty ahead, and someone raw and hurt that she loved very much, and the fear that quivered in her belly was a natural consequence she accepted. Her acceptance was bravery, at least that was what she told herself.

At the door, she calmed herself with a silent little prayer. Her dainty hand lifted, rapping the wooden frame with gentle urgency.

Briany swung the door open, his mouth swollen, looking tired. He leaned against the door frame in the thresholds, peering at her from over his glasses.

"Good morning, Brian. I hope I'm not interrupting anything urgent, but I was hoping I could see and speak with Helga. I'm sure you've heard what happened. I thought she might want some support."

Brian nodded once, but was unmoved from his position guarding the entry.

"If you like, I can come back later?" Phoebe was unsure why Brainy was acting so protective, but the change in his usual quiet, flexible demeanor gave her pause. "If this is an inconvenient time to approach her, that is. She's not answering my calls, so I am assuming she is still asleep, but…" she paused, peering at the wreck and devastation behind Brainy. "Maybe I can help clean up a little while you lay down?"

Brian stepped aside, and Phoebe hopped in quickly, worried he would change his mind. She looked around the room quickly, not making a big production of the movement. She did not want to make it seem like she was over concerned about the mess, even if it was distressing.

All the pots and pans in the kitchen were scattered across the living room floor, which was half buried under the tall, overturned shelves that had held their collective record collection, that same precious burden cascaded out in a dramatic parabola over everything. The couch was upended, flipped and leaning against the wall on its narrow side, all the cushions tipped out of it awkwardly. Circling the shattered glass porch door, the two small end tables that had sat on either side of the couch, tipped over and under a hole in the opposite wall that had most likely been punched by one of the said tables in flight. Such devastation scattered itself through the entire visible area of the department, and everything smelled like bleach and blood. An alarming splatter and smear of blood caught her eye, and she followed fat drops in the dirty carpet down the hall to Helga's room.

Phoebe looked up at Brainy, who stood looking at the apartment with her quietly. When he noticed her look in his direction, he sighed and walked towards the porch with a broom he picked up from its spot leaning on the wall. She wordlessly watched him sweep up glass, unsure what to say or do, grasping for some verse or verbs of comfort she might offer in this catastrophic wake.

Instead, she just got to work in the kitchen, picking up plates and dishes that were unbroken and stacking them neatly.

_It might be worse than we thought_, she fearfully pondered, full of dread. That bloodstain worried her. It didn't appear as vexingly large as would necessitate her immediate medical concern, and she was doubtless that Brian would immediately inform her if some unspeakable harm had come to Helga. And yet, seeing the private violence her friend inflicted instilled nothing but doubts into Phoebe.

_Maybe it is best to reconsider our current course. A reconciliation could very well be an impossibility at this juncture. _Phoebe was realistic, and forced to confront the sobering reality of this situation hands on.

A door opened down the hall and Helga, hair pure silvery white in a shocking change, staggered bleary-eyed into the living room. She didn't seem to notice Phoebe crouched in the kitchen, and walked directly to Brainy.

"Brian, look, I just wanted to apologize again," she started, and Brian held up a finger to her lips to try to shush her. "No, let me finish. I'm really, _really_ sorry, I don't know what came over me, well, actually, I do, and it's this terrible side of me that I just can't really seem to control and I am working on getting it under control with Dr. Bliss but I'm still making mistakes and I really hurt you, and I'm sorry. I didn't want to get you involved in this mess, and I really crossed the line. I'm sorry I...I'm sorry I bit you."

Phoebe's eyes went a little wide. _She __bit__ him? Where? _Phoebe tried to recollect her visual inspection of Brian the moment the door was opened, and the only thing out of place was a swollen mouth. No external bruising or marks. _Inside his mouth? His tongue? She bit his tongue?_ She crouched, motionless, trying to comprehend this, when she saw Helga's bare feet step into vision inches away from her. She slowly looked up at an angry, trembling Helga, fists clenched in angry white balls at her hips.

"Hello, _Phoebe._" Her voice carried the promise of a threat.

"H-Hello, Helga, I was just helping Brian clean up a little, I didn't mean to listen in to your conversation," she hastily rattled off, standing nervously and setting the plates she had collected on the kitchen counter. "I'll just go, you sound like you have to talk-"

Helga's hand slapped onto the wall, blocking Phoebe's exit through the kitchen.

"Oh no, I don't think that'll be necessary, Pheebs. Stay a bit. _Let's chew the fat_, old chum."

Phoebe felt very small, and very threatened. "H-Helga, I think it's imperative that you stay calm."

"Oh, I'm perfectly calm, Phoebe. This is me being perfectly calm. Last night? All of _this?_ That was me, _not_ being calm. Do you know _why_ I wasn't calm last night? Care to venture a guess?"

"B-Because of what Arnold told you about Lila?" Phoebe was too nervous to try to uphold any level of subterfuge. The truth came spilling out of her.

"Because of what Arnold told me about Lila. Very good, Phoebe. What a sleuth. What a Holmes. Always just so clever, Phoebe, and that's the problem."

"Problem?" Phoebe's voice was quiet, a squeak out of her throat.

"Oh yes, a big problem. See, the _worst_ part about hearing that little _thing_ about Lila last night was that I heard it from _him._ When my _best friend_ knew this unhappy little _thing_ the whole time, and never told me. I could have been saved a _lot_ of undue embarrassment and psychological trauma if I'd had just a _teensy_ heads up. Instead, I stagger blindly into a bedroom with the love of my life and _stupidly_ sleep with him. Six times. In a row. And what happens then?"

Phoebe didn't answer her, simply too nervous to offer anything other than a slight shrug of her thin shoulders.

"I'll tell you what happened, Phoebe." Helga was smiling threateningly, her face a mask of calm despite her body's gently quaking tremulous fury.

Suddenly, Helga slammed her fist against the wall, startling Phoebe. She closed her eyes, putting her hands in front of her expecting a hit.

None came, and she opened her eyes slowly, to see Helga slumped on her knees, a pained expression on her tired face.

"_EVERYTHING WAS RUINED!_"

Helga's shriek punctuated the silence between the three friends. Phoebe slowly lowered herself down, crouching next to Helga, heart a tumult and desperate to offer some solace or comforting words, but unable to find the strength or significance to make the difficult effort.

"And now, now I have to find some way to face him after I hit him. Now I have to figure out what the fuck kind of apology you say for that. I _hit_ him, Phoebe. I punched him as hard as I could, right in the face. I have _no_ idea how I'm supposed to recover from that, and get his forgiveness, or even talk to him again. And even that might not be possible, because, hell, I'm a fucking unstable psychotic bitch, and the second I see his stupid face I'm likely to remember the fact that he _was engaged to someone I hate more than almost anything_, and lose my shit all over him again! I'm fucked, Phoebe! I'm fucked!"

Helga looked her friend dead in the eyes.

"And you could have helped. And you _didn't."_

Phoebe felt her eyes grow hot and wet, the terrible accusation a deadly force to her heart. The guilt of her ceaseless plotting, the careful manipulation, and the sneaking around had been threatening to overwhelm her ever since they started. She had her reasons, and she had even convinced herself and her friends they were good ones. But now, she was full of doubt, and re-thinking her every step.

She finally found her voice, speaking calmly and quietly. "How can I help you now?"

Helga sighed, her whole body lifting and falling with the release of the emotions inside her.

"I don't know. Stop lying to me. Don't hide things from me. How can I trust you anymore?"

"Helga, I'm deeply sorry for the grievous wounds my actions may have inflicted. I am truly, sincerely sorry, but I swear I thought I was acting in your best interests."

A fierce snarl crooked on Helga's face suddenly. "How?" She shot back.

"Well, Arnold was coming back to Hillwood to reconcile with you. You never would have let that happen if you knew. You would have closed him off, and shut that door forever. You would have done everything you could to avoid seeing him, and then Arnold would have left Hillwood forever, and got married to LIla. At least _this_ way, you got to be with him for a little while. And he broke up with Lila right before the party. So he clearly has feelings for you still. Strong ones. Feelings strong enough to end a significant relationship to a woman he owes a life debt to. I may have been sneaky, and mislead you, and got all our friends to help, but, Helga, the plan _worked._ Arnold's not engaged anymore, and he spent the night with _you_ and not Lila. The future is uncertain now, and we don't know what is going to happen. None of that would be true if I had told you he was engaged."

Helga's face was unreadable to Phoebe, a strange mask of an impassive threat.

"Helga, what I am attempting to communicate is that it was difficult, no, painful for me to keep this from you, but I had to for you to have any chance. I had to work against my own conscience as your best friend, and my own instincts as a woman, and my own values as a person. And," Phoebe dared to reveal even more to Helga, gambling that one last tidbit might be enough to smoothe out her rancor. "Lila had a hand in this, too."

Helga's eyes narrowed, and Phoebe could see her face start to redden. _Divert divert divert!_

"What I mean is!"

"What you mean is you and Lila were in cahoots! Is that it?!"

"No, no, I mean, well, Lila _did_ know about the plan. But I had to tell her at least _parts_ of the plan to insure her non-interference. I wanted a clean slate for you two to reconcile. I gambled that her good and trusting nature would compel her to consent to the plan, and I was right."

"She _consented_? Like hell she did. Lila Sawyer has lived her entire life with Arnold around her pretty little finger and there's no way in any kind of _Hell_ she would give that up."

"No, Helga, she did. In fact, she made Gerald and I swear to do our best to get Arnold to stay. She had this particularly altruistic notion that if she released Arnold to his own devices, and he returned to her of his own free will, she could marry him doubt free. _She _gambled as well. And she lost. We won."

Helga stood up, swiping her knees clean. Phoebe looked up at her friend over her glasses, pressing on.

"Arnold could have told you when he ran into you at the coffee shop but opted to remain mum on the topic. That wasn't a mistake. He wasn't sure how he felt about returning _or_ by seeing you again. You threw his heart into disarray, and I wanted to give you the weapons you needed to seal the deal. I'm sorry, Helga. I am deeply, sincerely apologetic for manipulating you in this abhorrent manner. But I couldn't do _nothing_ and watch you two drift apart forever. I love you too much to watch that happen."

Helga didn't say anything at first. Phoebe watched her walk away, then come back, her face a rictus of anger, then melt away into confusion as she paced away. She turned suddenly, holding a finger up, clearly prepared for some internal rebuttal, but stopped short of saying anything and just sighed the words away into the air. Finally, Helga stepped towards her friend, and extended her hand to Phoebe.

"Come on, get off the dirty floor, Pheebs." She sounded tired. Phoebe slipped her small hand into Helga's, and Helga lifted her up onto her feet. Then, she spoke. "I get it. I do. Really, I've done much worse myself. And I'm a little proud of you, in a way. This is a real Helga Pataki kind of power play. I never expected it out of you."

Helga's face was a fond smile. Her grip tightened a little bit, and her face became serious.

"But if you _ever_ lie to me again, it's gonna get ugly."

"Truthing." Phoebe smiled nervously at her friend, attempting to dispel the tension.

A knock at the door changed the tone in an instant. Helga, Brian, and Phoebe whipped their heads around, staring at the front door.

Brian and Phoebe locked eyes for a second, and then both stared at Helga. It had to be Arnold. Who else could it be?

Helga shook her head once, and started for the door.

"Helga wait," Phoebe tried to think of a way to delay this moment. Anything!

"Sorry, Pheebs, if it's him, my forehead's got a date with the floor. I've got some _mea culpas_ ahead of me."

Phoebe bit her lip, nodding in agreement. All she could do was watch, now.

Helga opened the door enough that Phoebe could see Arnold's face. A wine colored bruise swelled on his left cheek, an inch below the eye. Phoebe winced at the sight of it.

"Hi, Helga."

"Hello, Arnold." Phoebe thought that Helga's voice was terribly quiet. Her heart bled for the courage of her friend.

"Can I come in?"

"I'd advise against that."

"Alright. Can you come out then?"

"I'm not sure."

"Well, do you think you could find out, and meet me in Gerald Field?"

"W-why would I meet you there?"

"Bring your catcher's gear. You still have it right?" Phoebe was immediately confused. _What is Arnold planning?_

"Yeah, I have it here...why would I bring my gear? What's your angle, Arnold?"

"No angle. I just wanna talk. With a good bit of distance between us." _Smart. _Phoebe appreciated the elegance of his suggestion.

Helga looked back at Phoebe, her face worried. She seemed to search Phoebe's eyes for an answer. Phoebe nodded once. _Do it. Go with him._

Helga sighed and turned back to Arnold. "Yeah okay fine. I'll go play catch with you, Football Head. Just give me some time. I haven't eaten anything yet and I gotta get dressed."

"Skip breakfast. Come in what you're wearing." Arnold seemed oddly insistent. Pushy, even. _What is he angling at? Why do this when Helga is hungry and uncomfortable?_

"Really, Arnold? You want me to skip breakfast, _the most important meal of the day_, so I can go play catch with you in Gerald Field. In my shorts and tank top."

"Yes," he nodded. "Please."

Phoebe cheered for her friend internally when Helga finally agreed. "Okay, okay, you win, Football Head. Stay there. I'll walk with you."

Helga closed the door and walked into the room, covering her eyes with a hand. "Why did I agree to do this again?"

Phoebe chimed in. "Because he's the man you love and this is your chance to apologize in private?"

"Oh yeah. Right. I hate that."

Helga sighed and disappeared into her room. She came out, a pair of dirty pink cleats on her feet and her silvery white hair in a ponytail peaking out from under the brim of a backwards baseball cap, also pink. She carried a white duffel bag, in which Phoebe imagined all her catcher's gear was stowed.

"Alright. I'm off. Wish me luck. Oh, and Phoebe?"

"Yes, Helga?"

"Don't leave until the apartment is clean." Helga shut the door behind her, disappearing from the apartment and off into her future with Arnold.

"Cleaning," Phoebe smiled to herself, and moved to help Brian with the cleaning.


End file.
